"We need to teach [firefighters] not to get into those situations in the first place; not equip them so they can go do it."
The other thing—and this is a philosophical debate within wildland firefighting—and that is How much do we want to encapsulate the firefighter? How much do we want to protect him, because they're maybe running chain saws, do they wear ear muffs, do they wear face masks, do they wear eye goggles? Do they wear two layers of clothing, or one? Those sorts of things. How much of that can be put on to protect? And one argument can be made we need to do all that and maybe more, so they're protected. The other aspect of it is the more we put that stuff on people, the more you restrict vision, to be able to talk. The more you put heavier clothes that allows them to get closer to the fire, you are reducing their senses, and their ability to see what's going on around them, and to react quickly to that. And so if you do that, you run the risk of what's going to happen is that they'll get deeper and deeper and deeper into a bad situation before (unclear), where it becomes bad, to where it's life threatening. So there's a real argument, what do you do, how far do you go? I've always—and maybe I'm from the older school of fire—but I've always felt that what we need to do is unencumber firefighters. And we need to teach them not to get into those situations in the first place; not equip them so they can go do it. Teach them so that you can do what you can do, but stay out of dangerous situations. I mean, there's no wildfire that's worth injury or death. It just doesn't exist.
I've been on a fire where I've been burned on my elbows, and I was wearing a single fire shirt, short-sleeved tee shirt. I knew it was getting extremely hot and it was time to leave, and I left. Had I had on two layers of clothes, would I have stayed longer and gotten worse? It's one of those. So I always felt let's teach people to stay out of the bad, and recognize when things are going to be getting to that situation.