George Sheppard Interview

Today is July 5, 2001. My name is Jennifer Kern, and I am happy to be here in the Cline Library with George Sheppard, who has spent many years in wildland fire management. George is a wildlife biologist with the Williams Ranger District in the Kaibab National Forest. He also serves on the Type I National Fire Team. This interview is part of an ongoing project entitled "Fire on the Plateau," and Robert Marvin Garcia Hunt is also present in the room.

Kern: First I'd like to say thank you, George, for coming in and giving us some of your time.

Sheppard: It's been my pleasure.

Kern: Could you start off just by telling us a little bit about yourself, where you were born, what got you here to Flagstaff?

Sheppard: Wow. It's been a long trail from Chicago to the Southwestern U.S. I was born and raised in Chicago. It took several years after high school. I spent some time in the Army, and after the Army I moved out to Arizona to attend Arizona State University. I first came out to the university in 1973 to study archaeology and anthropology. As I was working in the department there to earn my way through school, studying bush babies which were introduced into the laboratory environment there at Arizona State in 1975, my professor suggested that since I was so interested in working with animals that I consider moving over into the wildlife management program at Arizona State. And so I took up the field of wildlife management and I was hired by the Bureau of Land Management in 1978 as a wildlife biologist.

Kern: And that was in Tucson?

Sheppard: That was actually on the Arizona Strip District. Everything north of the Grand Canyon, with the exception of the national park itself, and the Kaibab Forest, where I now work, is the Arizona Strip District for the Bureau of Land Management.

Kern: And what does the strip signify?

Sheppard: I guess it signifies just a strip of land that's north of the Grand Canyon. It's bounded by Utah, of course, on the north, and Nevada on the west side. And you have the Colorado River on the south end, further breaking that part off from the state of Arizona, in essence. So it's politically separated from the rest of the state kind by those boundaries, as well as the river itself physically separates it.

Kern: I have to ask, what are bush babies?

Sheppard: Bush babies are little prosimians. They're about the size of your fist, if you were to just turn it in a little bit. And they're tree-dwelling primates that live in Galago, Senegal, in Africa. They're nocturnal animals, tiny little primates that hang out in the trees, chase bugs, and make a living in the jungles of Africa. Arizona State University moved them over, and we had to reverse their night cycle in order to facilitate for studying their behavior. We used infrared lights to observe the animals during the daytime, and they became adapted to that, as if it were their nighttime, although it was our daytime.

Kern: They were never introduced then, to the wildlife, were they, here in Arizona?

Sheppard: No, these were strictly for laboratory studies. Dr. Leanne Nash was my professor at Arizona State University, and she's a premier international primatologist, who originally worked in Africa with baboons at the same time Jane Goodall worked in Africa. National Geographic made a choice between the two, and it wasn't Jane versus LeAnn—more so it was the cute chimps versus the angry-looking baboons. Chimps are more marketable, so "the rest is history" as they say.

Kern: So how did you get involved with fire management?

Sheppard: Fire management had nothing to do with my academic training or my schooling at Arizona State University. It only came into my career as a co-op ed student—a cooperative education student—while I was working on the North Kaibab Plateau in 1977. It was around the first of July that year—about the same time that it is now, and we'd just had thousands of lightning strikes. Well, there were lightning strikes all over northern Arizona THAT year, and one hit the plateau in the right place at the right time, and the fire started in a place called DeMott Park.

While I was working with Abert Squirrels, a fire engine came by and they were short a person or two, and the fire was just getting started, and they asked if I could jump on and go fight this fire with them, and I said, "Sure, why not?" So I dropped the squirrels I was holding at the time, and the squirrels ran off, and I ran off to go chase fire. As it turned out, it was what I consider a baptism by fire. And by that I mean I was literally going into a dense forested area that I'd never been in before, and trying to beat down the fire, build a fire line to stop it from moving into the meadows that you drive through as you go to the North Rim.

It was the most impressive experience I've ever had in my life... up to that point. I remember the fire getting up into the trees and racing through the crowns, and somebody yelling for us to get out of there, and so I just went running back through the forest to the opening, and before I left the forest itself, I looked back and took my camera out and took a picture. To this day, that's the best photo I've ever taken of fire. The first fire I ever fought turned out to be a baptism by fire, but also produced the nicest photo I've ever taken.

Kern: What is it that impresses you so much about fire?

Sheppard: I think it's the physical force that nature exhibits on a large fire. All fires can be dramatic, but when you're looking at a huge wilderness area, anywhere in the Intermountain West or the western states, fires can burn tens of thousands of acres. The main part of the fire is moving with such force and creating its own weather by building columns of smoke up into the atmosphere, that go up about 30,000 feet in some cases. By creating its own weather, I mean it actually can form a thunderhead. I wanted to say thunder cell, but it's basically a thunderhead over the fire, and you can have lightning and downdrafts coming off this thunder cell, and the winds are quite dramatic as well. So it's a combination, I think, of just the sheer force of the fire, and what it can actually produce as byproducts.

Kern: So after that first fire, where did you go to next? How did you officially become a part of fire management?

Sheppard: As I mentioned, after my academic training I was hired in 1978 by the Bureau of Land Management, and I worked on the Arizona Strip District, which is based out of St. George, Utah—it's the closest town to the border—where we had our offices. And it's in a relatively remote area. You're several hours' driving time for anyone to get there to support a firefighting effort. And so the district there had to rely on their own personnel to fight the fires, at least for the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours. And so when the fire started—and especially in the lower desert, we seem to have a lot of desert fires up there—they would call us on the radio, and we'd be out on some other work assignment, and we'd have to drop everything we were doing and go jump on this fire. I had very little training at the time. The training that we did have was the basics, and it's called basic firefighter training. It's gotten more sophisticated since then. However, it provided us the understanding of how to use tools, and that you need to drink water, and you carried a fire shelter belt around your waist, and you had to have a hard hat on. So basically that's how I first started in my career in firefighting, with the Bureau of Land Management and fighting desert fires.

Kern: Were you required to wear the Nomex at that point?

Sheppard: Nomex clothing was required back then. It wasn't as stringently required as it is today. They were able to substitute blue jeans for Nomex pants, because they didn't necessarily burn readily. It's not an artificial material that would burn quickly. The 100 percent cotton I think was important. But since then we've come to require all Nomex be worn on fires.

Kern: And so then you continued on with training, you decided to start a career—or kind of a split career?

Sheppard: Yeah, it basically is a split career—other duties as assigned, you might say, that's not written into your job description or personnel performance record each year—but it is something that public land management agencies definitely need in their work force, to have the trained, skilled firefighters. I believe we're called militia. They can call us out at any time—it used to be at any time—and we could go out and fight fire. It was probably a ways back in time, before my time, that it was required, and you HAD to go. Now, you do make a choice if you're offered to go on a fire assignment. Most every one of them I do accept.

Things have developed in my career, almost like it's been a split career: one side of it where I spend nine to five as a wildlife biologist. I do emphasize fire management in my career, but the fire suppression side of it has really developed over time as well, to the extent now that I'm on a national emergency team or incident management team. We have been assigned to hurricanes, earthquakes, large fires of course, and we can respond to just about any sort of national emergency.

Since that day on the plateau where I was baptized by fire, I'm currently a division supervisor with a national emergency team, and I also fly air attack as needed around the country [now including the World Trade Center terrorist attacks].

Kern: Could you talk a little bit about that? Could you explain what air attack is and how it's all done?

Sheppard: Air attack, I've been told, is basically an air traffic controller in the sky. You have what's called a platform or a plane that you fly in. I fly with a pilot that has been trained and certified so that they can fly federal firefighters. And it's usually in a twin-engine Beechcraft Baron, where I sit in the copilot's seat and manage all the aircraft or air resources coming into a fire. So the airspace over the fire is totally under my control as the air attack group supervisor assigned to that fire. We're also responsible for watching out for the firefighters on the ground, and assisting them in any way that the air resources can support their firefighting effort. The one facet of air attack that most people are familiar with, of course, is the retardant tankers that we use on the fires. It's what's most commonly seen on television. We also manage the rotors, or the helicopters, to support the firefighters with buckets of water or foam retardant. And so we're flying over the fire and observing fire behavior from the air; assisting firefighters by advising them how the fire is moving in a certain direction or where it's moving to; and we direct lead planes that are leading the retardant tankers into the fire. We advise them as to what tactics we're employing on the fire, and where it would be best to start their retardant drops to prevent the fire from moving beyond a certain point.

It's, to me, the most intensive, stressful position on a fire, because you have so much at your responsibility: the hundreds of firefighters on the ground that you have to be watching out for. You also have various aircraft coming into the fire, both wanted and unwanted. Sometimes there's tourists that see the smoke and want to go see what a fire looks like from the air, and you have to capture that person almost literally and direct them away from the fire as best you can. There are other aircraft that present a delicate situation when you're having to ask a senator to avoid going into airspace for a while until you finish certain missions. But the pilots that we're dealing with, they all understand the hazards and the dangers involved in fighting fire by the air. It's a real exciting opportunity to support a firefighting effort. Like I say, it's the most intense, but also one of the most rewarding things that I've done in my career.

Kern: What's the training like? How long is it?

Sheppard: The training that they put on for air attack lasts one week. Five days you're in classroom, and on the last day they put you in a simulator where you're in the copilot's seat with all the frequencies, the radio equipment—what they call avionics—and you're being fed information from a variety of cast players as if it were a real incident. And so you get through the week's training, and the simulation, and assuming you pass the course, you're selected as a trainee required to accomplish a variety of tasks that you need to perform at a competent level. And for an air attack position, I think it's probably the most intensive training document that is filled out on a fire. It has more tasks than any other position that you need to fulfill. In 1997 after the training, it took three years of assignments, and I must have had seven to ten assignments as a trainee before I was certified on the Cerro Grande [Los Alamos] Fire. I think the benefit of taking longer on a position like that really is borne out in the first assignment I took solo without having a trainer involved with the assignment. I felt very comfortable after going through the rigorous training the previous three years and having some of the highest quality trainers involved in the training assignments in the Southwest. My assignment to Florida this year was only my second assignment as a qualified air attack, but it proved that, like I was saying, the training prepared me for what I was about to get involved with. So it was well worth the time spent.

Kern: So the training qualifies you to serve as an air attack supervisor across the States?

Sheppard: Right. As a federal firefighter, you can travel anywhere in the United States and fight fire. And there are also special assignments that can take firefighters out of the country. We've often supported Canada with hotshot crews, especially, but also with equipment and overhead-type positions. About five years ago, there were fires in Mexico, and it was more of the Hispanic firefighter community that supported them, but there were teams of firefighters that went to Mexico. There's also been firefighters sent to Indonesia in the past, and the Galapagos Islands, which was quite the unique experience for firefighters, to go to these islands and fight fires in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. But for the most part, we're focused on the fifty United States in our firefighting effort.

Kern: What are some of the tasks that you'll have to go through? You said there is a long list. Can you talk about a few of them?

Sheppard: Sure. It starts from the time the order is placed to my dispatch office, and they notify me that there's an opportunity to fly as air attack on a fire, "Would you like to take the order?" You have to start right off understanding where the fire's at, of course, and what type of aircraft that you'll be assigned to, and is that aircraft coming to pick you up—the basic logistical things that you need to know have to be done before you ever leave your office . . . where you're going and how you're going to get there. Once you're there, you want to know what radio frequencies you'll be assigned. You have both Victor, AM frequencies, and FM frequencies. And the Victor frequencies are used for aircraft only, where you communicate with other aircraft over these channels. Then you have the other frequencies to be used for command and talking air-to-ground with the ground forces. So you have radio frequency management that you're responsible for as an air attack group supervisor. You have to make sure that you have all those frequencies programmed in to the radio equipment. Once you have all that set up, other tasks that you have to do is find out what aircraft are going to be assigned to the fire. And once you get over the fire, if you need further aircraft to support the firefighting effort, you would place an order for additional aircraft at that time. There's also the transition that you have with an air attack that's currently assigned to the fire. When you fly into the incident, you advise that air attack, or the person flying over the fire, when you're five or ten minutes out, and that you'd like to have a briefing before taking the fire over. You go through a period of explanations about what's taking place on the fire, which aircraft are assigned, which ones are coming to you, and what the tactics are, who's assigned to the ground—all the myriad of factors that enable you to do the job safely and thoroughly after you take the fire over. And then once you do take the fire over as the air attack group supervisor, you stay over that fire and watch and wait for something to happen. Sometimes it's just burning holes in the sky, like you're just flying around in a circle for hours. And at other times the fire gets up and starts misbehaving again and you have to call in retardant or helicopters to help support the firefighting effort. Basically that's it.

Kern: Who do you place the call with if you need three or four more planes? What is that position called? Or who's in charge of that?

Sheppard: There'll be a dispatch center that you place the order through. If we were to take Florida, for example, we would have to call back in to the tanker base where we were assigned at Punta Gorda, Florida, and request three more tankers. And they would notify the tankers, and the tankers would launch from Punta Gorda Tanker Base and come to the fire.

Kern: Have you ever experienced an incident where you're asking for more backup or for more planes and they reject your request?

Sheppard: Yeah, that's a very good question, because oftentimes we do run into situations where there are multiple fires going on in the region, and not enough tankers to go around. There's coordination centers set up around the country, and ours is in the Southwest, in Albuquerque. That coordination center, when there are multiple fires, large fires happening, they'll have tankers assigned to the tanker bases, but not assigned to fires. They'll prioritize the fires as to which ones are threatening life and property as being the highest priority, and those fires will receive first attention from air support. If you happen to be on one of those fires, you're fortunate to get the air support. But if you're not, if you're on a wilderness fire, let's say, that's not threatening life or property, then you will likely have to wait your turn for available aircraft. That's becoming more and more common where we have limited resources to tap, and we oftentimes find ourselves having to wait—sometimes several days before we can get air support to a fire.

Kern: What's the maximum number of hours that you in your position can stay in the air, or total number of hours?

Sheppard: We usually don't exceed four hours. It's basically a fuel cycle for the aircraft. And once you're running lower on fuel, you'll return to base and refuel. Then you're down on the ground. If you're the only air attack assigned to the fire, you might be on the ground for about an hour unless the incident commander or operation section chief assigned to the fire says, "Take two or three hours, come back when fire activity is expected to pick up." So you'll shut down for a couple hours, which is usually what you'll do if there are two air attacks assigned to the fire: you'll transition every three to four hours.

Kern: And physically what is it like when you're up in the air for a fire?

Sheppard: It's not like flying in a jet airplane, commercial aircraft. It's much more physically draining. I mentioned how intense and stressful the position is to start with. And so mentally you're fatigued after a day's shift flying air attack. But physically, especially in the Intermountain West in some of the canyons that we're having to fight fire over, the turbulence is something that can really beat the hell out of you. By the time you're done with two, three hours of being bumped up and down in the plane—and oftentimes you're hitting your head on the ceiling of the aircraft. You're fortunate to have headphones that are cushioned, if that's where you hit your head. You do literally take a beating up there at times, and you have to stay focused. So physically, after a day of doing air attack, you're ready for a hotel room.

Kern: Before you took this position, before you started training for this position of air attack supervisor, where were you before that, and can you tell us a little bit about that position?

Sheppard: Yeah. I've been a division supervisor since 1984, as a wildland firefighter. A division supervisor is real similar to an air attack person, except you're doing it on the ground. I'm responsible for all the personnel coming into a geographic location on a fire. And also I'm responsible for implementing the strategies through various tactics, anywhere from constructing control lines to burning out large segments of fire line to prevent fire from moving across your fire line. You want to get a buffer, if you will, between the main fire and your constructed fire line, so you blacken an area in advance of the main fire coming toward you. That's what I did before— division supervisor—and still perform as division supervisor on our national emergency team. I've been with the national emergency team now, as a division supervisor, for, I think, ten years. It's been an excellent group of people I've been assigned with over the years. When I thought about taking on air attack as another part of my training, Cathie Zettler, another firefighter on the forest here, suggest to me that, "You do so well fighting fire on the ground, you ought to take some of that knowledge up to the air, because some our best air attacks are those people that have fought fire personally on the ground for many years." I took that to heart that maybe it would be something I'd be good at. I tried it, and it's worked out very well so far.

Kern: Have you ever had a very frightening situation in the air?

Sheppard: Personally, I can't think of any that were life threatening. There's been exciting times, of course. Most recently, in Florida, with fire moving towards homes outside of Port Charlotte, I was in the right place at the right time. I observed the fire moving towards the homes. It changed direction and I had to divert tankers to that location. This is something, though, that happens all the time up there. It's all exciting. When you're on a going fire, everything that's going on around you is quite exciting to observe. When you're working as part of this team effort to get the job done, from the firefighter on the ground to the tanker pilots, to the lead plane pilots, you're so focused on accomplishing the task and the mission of saving life and property, you don't even think about it until you're on the ground. I reflect back on the day's events and record those things, and I go, "Wow, that was impressive: that we were able to divert those tankers, drop the retardant within a quarter-mile of those homes, and stop the fire from burning into the community." So you don't think about it at the time, because you're so focused on getting the job done. But afterwards, it's like a sigh of relief, and also a sense of pride in what you've done, what you've accomplished.

Kern: Have you ever felt fear?

Sheppard: (pause) As an air attack, I haven't been up enough to be in those situations. But I've talked to people that have been flying air attack for several years. It's like fighting fire on the ground, though: you should respect fire, and also respect the fact that life is short and it can end at any time. They don't talk about it as fear when they're involved in a near miss in the air. It has happened. We've had fatalities from air attacks crashing. It's something that you try to put out of your mind, though, and get on with doing the job. It's very sad to reflect back on the fatalities that have occurred, but I found that I'm able to handle the position and manage the fear, if you will. You can't get rid of it, so I feel I can manage the fear effectively enough to do the job as an air attack. Fear while fighting fire on the line, though, that's certainly an aspect of the job that you need to be able to manage also. You don't know yourself if you can do it. You might be sitting here comfortably in the Cline Library thinking, "I'd never want to go out there and do that." However, you don't know if you have it within yourself to be able to manage that situation and to be put into that scenario where you're having to fight fire, either in the air or on the ground. You can take the strongest, most macho guy out of Hollywood, and throw him out into a fire, and he'll pee in his pants, he won't be able to handle it—or she won't be able to handle it. But you take a common person—I just consider myself an average guy—I find what I've chosen to do in my career the most rewarding thing I can ever think of doing. It gives you a real sense of satisfaction, of saving natural resources, people's lives and property, and walking away with a sense of pride in being part of a large team that's come together, focused on accomplishing one mission, one goal, and doing the job well and safely. And I guess if there's one thing that we reflect on as being the number one accomplishment on all assignments, is when people get home safely. We get the job done under hazardous conditions, and we're faced with life and death scenarios all the time, but it's what we do, and if you're doing it well, you're protecting people's lives, those that work for you, as well as those that live in the area where the fire is at. So the fear aspect of it, I've had to deal with extreme fire behavior and burnovers where we've had to move quickly to get out of harm's way, so we weren't literally burned over, but it was in a very tight situation where we had to respond rapidly and I had to communicate effectively: in a very short period of time, move thirty to forty firefighters off the midslope on this hill above Lake Isabella in California, and have them move through some intense heat with very little oxygen available, to get out of the way of the fire coming uphill at us. Fortunately I was able to gather them all together and move away from the reverse direction that the fire chose to take, which happened to be in our direction, and got them into the "black," the safe area. Afterwards you look back and think, "Whoa! That was pretty close! You don't want to get that close again, do you?" "No, I don't," I say to myself, "I will never get that close again."

I'd like to take time to reflect on something that's developed over the last decade in firefighting, and that is some basic firefighting orders that we follow. There's the ten standard firefighting orders that we follow, but one new concept has been developed by a firefighter by the name of Paul Gleason, after the fatalities in Colorado in 1994, where we lost fourteen firefighters, I believe. Storm King was the name of the fire that took their lives. But from that fire we've learned. And Paul Gleason developed what we call under the acronym LCES, which is Lookouts, Communication, Escape routes, and Safety zones. If we're assigned to a fire, those four factors must be incorporated into everything that we do for fighting fire on the line. We need to establish lookouts. These are people that are placed in strategic locations, oftentimes near the base of the fire, and/or above the fire along a ridge top, let's say. So they can watch what the main fire is doing while the rest of the firefighters or crews are working, building fire line or doing a burnout. These lookouts are assigned and have communications with the supervisors. Myself, for instance, as division supervisor, would need to maintain contact with that lookout, or with the crew boss who is the supervisor for that lookout, and be ready to move if that person says the fire has changed direction again, like it did to me at Lake Isabella in 1982, where we had to move rapidly. We didn't have a good lookout posted for that situation. Now we put lookouts in place, they communicate with us, and they let us know if we have to move away from our present position.

In order to move, you need to have an escape route. Oftentimes you're in very dense forested situations and it's not easy to move from your current location if you have to move rapidly. So you have to think in advance, "Okay, if we DO have to move, how are we going to do it, and in what direction?" So you have escape routes established already in advance, so that when you do move you all move in the same direction, and the direction you're moving in is towards the safety zone.

Safety zones are large areas, sometimes cleared in advance by dozers or by firefighters for that specific reason, or they can be areas that are already burned, that have already been blackened, and you can go in there safely and watch the fire go by. And that's the key to safety zones: they are areas that are large enough that you can go into the middle of it, and watch the fire without having to deploy a fire shelter to cover yourself up. Those should only be used in the most extreme situations, and you're oftentimes in a tighter area that you could not withstand the heat without additional support of a fire shelter.

So that LCES, again, is something that came out of Storm King, and the fatalities that occurred there. I think we've all learned some real serious lessons from that tragic year. We're working much more safely now. We're still seeing situations, though, that should be prevented, and could be prevented. Fatalities are still occurring. Burnovers are still happening. And we're finding that people are not paying attention to those factors of LCES and our ten standard firefighting orders that basically mandate that you follow. If you do follow them, you will be okay in any fire assignment. If you break one or any of those standard firefighting orders, that's when you start breaking down the safety barrier between the job you're doing and risking injuries and fatalities.

Kern: So in terms of communication, if you are above a fire on air attack, and you see the fire shifting, will you automatically communicate that to the lookout, or is there a chain [i.e., chain of command]?

Sheppard: As an air attack, and I observe the fire behavior changing to threaten either the firefighters or a community—a home or whatever—I'll communicate that to the operations section chief or the division supervisor that's assigned to the fire that's on the ground at that time. The lookout would just be another link in between. I go directly to the supervisors on the ground and advise them of the changing conditions.

Kern: And the supervisor sends that message out, in this scenario, to the lookout?

Sheppard: Yeah. Well, the lookout doesn't become a factor then. The lookout's advised that we are aware of the change in the fire behavior from air attack, and we're moving our location at this time into a safety zone. That brings up a good point. As an air attack, I'm also a lookout for these people. So it's air attack/lookout. And again, if you're a lookout on the line, that person's role is basically just to watch the fire and see if it does something that might threaten the firefighters. And then the supervisor will take action, whether it's a different tactic or moving the people to a safety zone.

Kern: And the safety zone could be a temporary place where they would go to, while the fire would pass near them or over them, and then they would go back out to the line?

Sheppard: Right. Yeah, the fire behavior becomes so extreme that you move to a safety zone, you ride it out, and you wait for it to settle down or drop out of the canopy back to the forest floor if it's a crown fire, which oftentimes is what prompts you into a safety zone. You have a crown fire that gets up off the ground and is moving more rapidly through the tops of the trees. And so you'll wait a while until the fire burns over the area, and then you go back to work. And oftentimes it means changing your tactic, or the location of your fire line that you're working on. You may have to fall back another mile to another ridge line and start over again, and hopefully you'll beat it the next time. But oftentimes it just keeps pushing you.

What happens from the strategic planning standpoint back in fire camp is they're looking at a big picture, whereas the people on the line, they are focused on the tactics to accomplish the strategy for the day's mission. The folks back in camp are planning, on large maps, "what if" situations. "If the fire burns to this point in the next twenty-four hours, what is our holding line, and where are we going to go to next?" So they have it planned seventy-two hours out—sometimes five, seven days in advance, as to where your fire line should be located. And that's based on the fire progress and fire behavior. They have models that can show how rapidly the fire is going to move through an area, how many acres they can calculate will be consumed by the fire on a certain day. Their strategy is based on the models that are showing you what the fire behavior is going to be like and where the fire's going to be. And they'll identify locations for safe fire line construction. There's a variety of situations that would dictate that the fire line location would be safe or unsafe. They're taking into account the safety, number one, as a factor in line construction; logistics supporting those people out there on the fire line.

So oftentimes it'll take days and even weeks to finish an assignment, if you're dealing like we were last year on fires in Idaho and Montana. Hundreds of thousands of acres are on fire and there are numerous teams assigned to various fires, all competing for the resources. You have to plan also what resources you're going to have available to accomplish the strategy that you're asked to do. Oftentimes it's like, "We can't do it with the few folks that we have available to us." We may not have air resources to support the firefighters out there. Their strategies aren't just based on the safest location, but also which one can be supported, and which one has the highest likelihood of success, based on the resources you have available. It becomes almost a chess match, like you're planning several moves out, and you're figuring, "Well, hopefully we'll be able to get more resources in the next week or two." But that's something that you can't rely on when you have multiple fires and no resources left in the country. Whether it's air resources or ground resources, last year was another example of years that have drained all the available firefighting resources in the country. You sometimes have to turn to the military then. And even with the military support, we still were exhausted of available resources. So (sigh) that's where that's at.

Kern: Would you go over the basics of constructing a fire line for those who have no concept of even what a fire line is?

Sheppard: Sure. That's one of the first things you learn about in firefighting and firefighter safety, is how to construct an effective fire line at an anchor point. Usually it's at the base of the fire. It's at a point where, let's say, the ignition source was at. So it's already burned there, and it's moving out away from you. Oftentimes it's in a "V" shape. But you want to be anchored at a base so that when you start building your fire line you can move back to that location as a safety zone, if nothing else. So you're flanking the fire by building a line along the fire's edge, or you're making an indirect line of fire line construction, and you're burning the fuel as you're completing the fire line. The fire line construction can take on the form of chain saws used to cut brush, large trees or small trees. We'll remove the vegetation in front of the firefighters that are carrying axes, what we call pulaskis, as well as other modified tools, shovel-like tools as well as rakes. The fire line is scratched down to mineral soil, or cleared of any vegetation down to mineral soil. The width of the fire line is dependent on the type of fuels that are in the area. If you're in an area of real heavy fuels, you want to make a wider fire line—five, seven, [feet]—in some cases, a dozer width wide, maybe ten feet wide. But we can usually get by on a three- to five-foot fire line in most fuel types. Where you have to make them wider is when you're cutting along some real dense brush, like chaparral in Southern California. Your fire lines there effectively have to be one or two dozer blades wide to prevent the fire from spotting over your line. Oftentimes, if the winds are strong enough, that's not even going to stop it.

So again, you have your fire line being constructed along the flanks of the fire, and you're working your way around towards the head of the fire, but you're doing this gradually along the safe edges of the fire so that you're not out in front, again, of the fire, without an anchor on either side. That way, if you do get in that situation, and the fire burns around your line, then you just have to start over again. This way, you have a good solid base to work from, and encircle the fire.

A fire line can also be assisted or constructed, if you will, by using air tankers. The retardant tankers can build fire line for you by boxing-in a fire. You'll have the first drop in a strategic location, and then continue your drops, attaching to the previous one, which is why you have the color in the retardant, so that the pilots can see where the last drop was at, and they'll connect right to that, work their way around the fire. Once they have it encircled, it's not going to stop the fire totally, but it will slow it down or retard it. What you need to have are firefighters on the ground to get into the area that is now slowed down by the use of the retardant, and build the fire line in conjunction with the retardant. You can effectively use retardant in the construction of fire lines to encircle the fire and stop it from moving.

Kern: So while you're on either side of the fire, flanking it, it's actually burning next to you?

Sheppard: It can be. That's where you have direct fire line construction right next to the fire's edge; or you can move away from it, whether it be fifty feet, a hundred yards, or even a mile. And there you have indirect fire line construction. What we prefer to do is construct direct fire line along the fire's edge. It seems like that wouldn't be the safest thing to do, but in actuality, in most cases it has been the safest thing to do. Because there you can directly observe what the fire is doing, and you can move back to the area that you have just worked as your anchor point. Your escape route leads right back to there. You're carrying fire with you, and so you're blackening along the fire's edge. Once it's burned, you can move into that area safely. You're working directly along the flanks of the fire, and as you move along to the head of the fire, that's where it might get a little more difficult if it's moving so rapidly you can't get around to the head of the fire safely. You may need to back off a little ways, and go indirect. Build your fire line out away from the fire and set your backing fires or burnouts to remove the vegetation, again, that I talked about before, in advance of the main fire moving against your fire line.

Kern: So it's not common for a fire, even with a massive shift of wind, to turn in the direction of a burned-out area? Is it possible that although an area has been burned, that anchor that you've created, that's where it started burning, is it possible for the winds to change it and for it to take it back?

Sheppard: Yeah, it is. And it has happened, and it has led to fatalities. And it's not in an area that has completely burned. Because once a forest is completely charred and burned of all vegetation, or a brushy area or grassland burned, it won't reburn. However, there are situations where the fire has only burned through the understory and left the canopy in place. It's preheated the vegetation in the brush or in the trees and only burned the surface fuels or the lower portions of the vegetation. The Dude Fire ten years ago in 1990, I believe it was, along the Mogollon Rim near Payson, Arizona, is a case in point, where they were working in a brushy area and the crew had just gone through an area where it had burned the understory of the brush and the vegetation and preheated the canopy. The thunder cell built over the rim, the downdrafts that were created out of those thunder cells blew the fire back into that area again, as you mentioned, and the fire did reignite and reburn through the same vegetation it had burned, but not totally consumed. And it was something that was of great concern to the firefighters at the time—took six lives. But anyway, it took six lives that day on the Dude Fire, where the brush reburned.

Kern: And they were constructing lines across other lines?

Sheppard: Yeah.

Kern: But that's not very common, I imagine, the reignition.

Sheppard: Not real common, but it does happen. It's something you need to be aware of if you're working in an area like that, where the vegetation hasn't totally burned, and it's not a safe area to go into. Something very similar to that happened on Storm King also, so there's some common denominators for firefighter fatalities that occur out on the fire line. And one of them seems to be reburned vegetation, and to be heads up about that.

Kern: Have you served as a trainer for some younger folks?

Sheppard: Yeah, I've spent a lot of time as a division supervisor trainer. And with the team especially we have a lot of opportunities to bring newer firefighters into the system and provide them with quality training assignments. That, to me, is one of the more rewarding aspects of my job, to train people and to give them a good appreciation for what the job all involves, and the responsibility of the job. So yeah, we need to pay close attention to that training, because they're the folks that are going to replace us in the next ten, fifteen years, and....

Sheppard: Can we take a break?

Kern: Oh, sure. (tape turned off and on) You were going to say something about ten or fifteen years… I was going to ask you what you are looking to do in the future, are there any other positions that you want to look at?

Sheppard: Oh, you're going to get into that?

Kern: Yeah, I was going to get into that. And I think...hmm…

Sheppard: You can ask some of those questions again.

Kern: Which ones?

Sheppard: I don't know. Some that I didn't give a very good answer to.

Kern: Wait, let's see. Oh, you know what, this is one that we haven't really gotten to, the actual structure between the divisions, Type I, Type II, because I know you guys talk about that. We hadn't got a clear explanation last time. (inaudible) Yes, do you want to start with that one? (inaudible). Could you explain the various divisions within the national system, Type I, Type II?

Sheppard: Okay, our national emergency team is structured in the four sections. You have the logistics section, finance, planning, and operations. Above the four sections, of course, we have the incident commander, who has full responsibility for a fire, let's say, or a hurricane. Then he has the four section chiefs that work for him. Logistics chief, their responsibility is to support by providing all the necessary resources, equipment, transportation, supplies, food, all that sort of stuff that you need to fight a fire. The finance section, that's obvious, needs to be able to track all the equipment, all the personnel time, contracting, all those various functions that fall under finance section—has to deal with money and who's paying for what. You also get involved in comp and claims. And so you have injuries on a fire and you have property that's burned. Whose responsibility is it, and so there's some documentation that goes along with that finance section. So you have to be very careful about counting the dollars and accounting for how those dollars are spent.

The planning section does just what it says also. It plans for the day's events, the week's events, however long it takes. They put together what's called a shift plan, and oftentimes it's every twelve hours. They have a day shift, usually around six o'clock in the morning, runs 'til six o'clock in the evening. Of course there's some overlap in between. You have planning meetings in the evening [to] set up the plan for the next day's events. Then you pull all that information together in what, again, they call the shift plan, which is distributed to all the firefighter supervisors, crew bosses, dozer bosses, all the personnel on the fire that need to have that information available to them. So the planning section pulls together the information needed for the firefighters to do their job. Just briefly mention the shift plan itself has various components that go into it. Paul Summerfelt, by the way, from the City of Flagstaff, is on a national emergency team with me as the planning section chief. He's responsible for pulling that plan together and signing off on it, that all the various components are in there, like the incident objectives, the organizational summary of who is all involved in this fire, by name, from incident commander on down to division supervisors. You'll also have the division assignment sheets for each division. Divisions again are broken out by geographic areas of the fire, and each division has an assignment sheet. That lists resources that will be working in that area. We'll also have special instructions for specific needs within that geographic area. For instance, crews need to be flown from helibase to Division A, instead of driving from Drop Point A to Drop Point B. They would need to fly, so that'll be in a special instructions message. And then you also have control objectives within that division assignment sheet.

Other components of the shift plan are a safety message, where you'll address any safety issues that may be encountered on the fire. You'll have a transportation map, how to get around. It'll also involve an air ops—air operations—summary sheet that lists all the frequencies are utilized with the aircraft, and which aircraft are assigned to the fire. Another key component in the plan is a communications plan that lists all the frequencies by the channels and what that frequency will be used for. Some frequencies are just for a division to use, so it's assigned to that division. Others, called command channels or command frequencies, when you talk on that command frequency, you're talking to everybody on the fire. So you have some real specific frequencies assigned to a fire; then you have other broader frequencies that you talk to more people on. And basically that's it for the shift plan. Again, that's under the planning section. So you see there's a big responsibility there for pulling all that information together. That person and people assigned to the planning section have to be working with all the various functions on the fire to gather that information.

Then there's the operations section, the one that I find myself most frequently involved with as either the operations section chief or a division supervisor or an air attack person. The operation section is responsible for implementing that plan and effectively fighting the fire safely and getting the job done.

Kern: Could you speak about the Type I, the Type II? What is that?

Sheppard: The difference between our Type I national emergency teams and Type II emergency teams are the complexities that you find from one fire to the next. The Type I national teams, there's about sixteen of them around the country. And we have two of them assigned in the Southwest. If fires—take the Leroux Fire in Flagstaff this year—it started on the slopes of the San Francisco Peaks, and it didn't appear from the beginning that it was going to be a problem, because it was high enough on the mountain where it wouldn't grow to be of any significant size greater than a few thousand acres. Nor did it appear as if it were going to threaten property and lives in the community of Flagstaff. The potential exists, but as they work through each day, it didn't threaten the community of Flagstaff. They assigned a Type II team, a local zone team from northern Arizona to the fire. And they basically have all the same functions and positions that are assigned to a Type I national team. The difference is, again, oftentimes inexperience in working larger operations, larger fires, and the complexities that you'd find in an urban interface environment. If Schultz Pass were threatened by the fire, that certainly would have become much more complex, and they may have made the decision early on to go Type I. So if the fire had started lower on the slopes of the San Francisco Peaks and had a higher likelihood of moving into structures and residences, evacuations would have had to take place. And again, it's likely they would have assigned one of the Southwest Type I teams to that fire.

The larger fires that you'll see in the country, those that are threatening life and property, and those that are most complex, that have a large air show or air operations, multiple aircraft, hazardous chemicals, whatever else would lend itself to making a fire more complex. That's when you get to the national emergency team level.

Kern: Did you serve on a Type II team at some point?

Sheppard: Yeah, I spent a couple of years on a Type II team. And that was good experience—to move gradually into the more complex, more demanding assignments. You know, I'm saying a lot of this with the thought in my mind, though, that most all the fires we get involved with nowadays are complex. And the reason is, there are homes scattered throughout the forest, and the wilderness areas, and you're going to encounter urban interface just about on every fire now. These complex situations that I discussed, we're finding them on most any assignments as well. Not to suggest that Type II teams aren't getting involved in these higher complex assignments like national teams—on the contrary, they are doing it effectively and just as well as Type I teams in many cases. Last year was a real good example. A lot of the Type II teams around the country traveled around the country on fires, much like our national teams do.

And oftentimes that's a distinction that you might want to focus on between the Type I and the Type II team. Type II teams generally stay in their home region. The Southwest—Arizona and New Mexico—has about five Type II teams. They normally won't leave the Southwest. Type I national teams are assigned to a region, but you travel nationally. We're under a national rotation where every week there's a different team that's number one for an assignment that can be called out. So we can travel anywhere in the country, whereas Type II teams usually stay within their own home region.

Kern: What was the last assignment that you were called out on?

Sheppard: With the Type I team, was last year, and that was in Montana on the Nine Mile Creek incident, north of Missoula about nine miles.

Kern: And how many acres (inaudible).

Sheppard: The Nine Mile involved three separate fires, and it was somewhere around 75,000 acres. The one prior to that, that we left in Idaho, was the largest fire in the country at the time, just west of Salmon, Idaho, called the Clear Creek Fire. I think the final total on that one was 140,000 acres. We left it when it had just hit 100,000. We had spent twenty-three days on it with military, and a lot of it in the wilderness, so it made it a very difficult fire to fight logistically. And difficult because we also had urban interface all through what was called Panther Creek, and we were protecting homes as well as trying to protect wilderness character and other resources. We also had hazardous waste on that one. There's a Superfund site, an EPA Superfund site, up one of the drainages where we had to fight fire, and the fire eventually burned all through the canyon where that mine site was at. So we had all the complexities on the Clear Creek Fire that you'd ever want to encounter: There was wilderness, urban interface, hazardous waste, and hazardous chemicals. There were logistical problems in terms of distances that people had to travel to get from fire camp to the fire line. [It was a] complex air show. We had two air attacks, a helicopter coordinator, because we had so many aircraft in the air that it demanded more supervision by not just an air attack, but also a helicopter coordinator that's flying up there in a helicopter and handling all the missions with the helicopter. So it definitely can escalate into a very complex operation. But we handle it very much like the military handles military operations. A lot of what we do is based on a militaristic philosophy, if you will. We have a command structure that we adhere to. There's a chain of command. We have all the support mechanisms in place, and we can pull it together in a short period of time in the most remote locations in the world. The military does it the same way: they arrive in remote locations around the world for their missions, and they set up little communities. We do the same thing on fires, so it's a paramilitary operation where we set up, again, that whole structure to accomplish a mission safely.

Kern: Are there some changes that you'd like to see in terms of the organization of these type of structures, or in general, in regards to fire management?

Sheppard: You know, the structure that's in place now came about for safety reasons and lack of coordination interagency-wise. When people arrive on a fire they don't have common frequencies established, and even titles weren't the same titles. So we didn't operate from the same book. We were different agencies distinctly operating from different manuals, etc., and different policies. Well, that was back in the seventies when it changed. Things are different today. That system, the incident command system, has matured and become even stronger. It's borne out in virtually every assignment that we go on, that the ICS structure and system is the only way that we could work. There has to be some sort of structure to the organization, and this gave us that structure. There has been a little bit of tweaking with that structure along the last twenty-five years or so, thirty years, but in essence that's how it was established. I don't see any changes coming to the incident command system, nor are there any needed at this time that I can see. It works very well. If you follow the process and the structure that's set up, you can get the job done.

Other changes in fire management: boy, a lot has changed. I came along back in the mid-seventies in fire management just by a fluke, and the rest, again, is my own personal career and history. We're looking at fire nowadays more how we can manage fire. By that I mean not necessarily fighting fires and suppressing fires as we've done for the last hundred years in this country. We've gotten very effective at it, our technology has certainly advanced where we're using the global positioning system in virtually every vehicle that's out on a fire, and the supervisor has a GPS [global positioning satellite] unit that they can pinpoint exactly where the fire is. That certainly has been an advancement, along with some of the other technological advancements. We have what we call probe-eyes that are handheld devices which can detect the slightest amount of heat on the surface. And so the hot spots that come up and flare up later, we can mop them up more effectively with the technology we have. So that's just to mention a few of the advances we've made in firefighting and fire suppression.

You know, I don't think we've come along as rapidly in the fire management world, though. By that I mean using fire to benefit the resources, because so many of these ecosystems that we're working in throughout, especially the Intermountain West, and the plateau, the northern Arizona and Colorado Plateau where we live today is a fire-dependent ecosystem—whether it's the mixed conifer, ponderosa pine, or the chaparral, sagebrush, and grasslands and piñon-juniper woodlands. Much of this land has burned historically on a frequency of anywhere from seven to twenty-five years—again, depending on what fuel type you're in. The evidence we have for that is in the dendrochronology or tree ring records that we can extract and count the number of fire scars, especially on ponderosa pine. It's a real valuable tree in that regard. Where fire has burned at the base of a large ponderosa pine on a frequency of seven to twelve years, it will oftentimes leave that scar tissue behind, and you can take a cross section of the tree and count the fire scars. So the turn of the century [i.e., early 1900s] was a time I'll use as when we removed fire from that ecosystem. There's an absence of fire scars for the last 100-125 years in many cases. What that's done to the ecosystem is what we're living with today. Fires are much more difficult to suppress, there's much more extreme fire behavior we're witnessing, and so it's making our job much more hazardous, much more unsafe, and much more difficult to accomplish. Even with all our technological advances, we're not able to stop a lot of these fires today. Oftentimes we've just got to work with them, flank them, and let them burn themselves out, because they're burning so extreme. Why is that? Again, because we've removed fire from these ecosystems. When you're missing at least five or six natural fire entries in these ecosystems, it's created a much denser forest condition. The fuels that historically existed out there in the ponderosa pine were grassy understories, fine fuels that would burn rapidly through the forested areas of the Southwest, and many places in the Intermountain West, and leave the trees and the forest intact as an open ponderosa pine savannah. Again, this is in many cases. There are certainly some exceptions to that where dense forest conditions prevailed historically before man's intervention out in the western states, but predominantly it was an open pine savannah that didn't burn with radical extreme fire behavior. Now you have the trees that sprouted around the turn of the century, the seedlings that were protected from fire's effects, and they've grown up to be dense sticks in the forest. Where it used to be 50 to 100 stems per acre, you're looking at over 1,000 stems per acre out there. So it's a very dense condition that lends itself to extreme fire behavior.

What I'd like to see happen over the next hundred years is a reversal of those trends that we've set in place in the past hundred years. But we have to start today, knowing that it's not going to happen overnight. And we've got to begin somewhere. That's already been started over the last several years. The research in ecosystem restoration to me is one of the greatest investments we can make in managing our national forest lands. We need to be able to get out there and manage the land so that we can either mimic fire by thinning the trees mechanically, removing them mechanically, and then apply prescribed fire into that system to reduce the fuel loading and the dense stand conditions. We're slowly moving towards that goal. There are things that seem to be holding us up, though. A lot of it is financial. It's going to be a very expensive effort to restore the ecosystems of the western states—very expensive. And that's why I don't have any short-term outlook on this. It's going to be at least a hundred years. And unless somebody comes along with some really innovative way to utilize the small diameter material that's out on the forest right now, I just don't see it happening overnight. We're looking at maybe 10,000 acres a year on a forest that we're treating with mechanical thinning and prescribed fire. We need to be closer to 100,000 acres, but we're not going to get there.

So fire management I think in concept has changed the way we look at fire and its role in the ecosystem. We've learned a lot about how fire can benefit ecosystem health through recycling of nutrients and healthy forage conditions and vegetation and actual tree growth and diameter of trees is enhanced by fire's role in the ecosystem. But we've also learned how powerful and how destructive fire can also be. So you might ask....

Smokey Bear, in many ways, was responsible for what's happened out there on the landscape. That ad campaign back in the forties, or whenever it was instituted—one of the most successful advertising campaigns the world's ever seen. Everybody knows Smokey Bear like they know Michael Jordan—even more so, because people around the world can all identify with Smokey Bear, and look what he's done, or she's done: She removed fire from an ecosystem that depended on fire for its health. Smokey didn't know that back then. Smokey was Smokey—he was just a little bear that had his paws singed and thought that wasn't a good thing to happen to wildlife or to the plants out in the forest, "And so we need to stop fires from burning, because it harms Bambi, and it harms trees, and it kills things." But what Smokey didn't know, and what all the foresters and biologists at the time didn't know, was how important fire was in those ecosystems.

Today, though, Smokey is still Smokey, he still does not want man to cause fires out there by accident or intentional. At the same time, Smokey's gotten wiser. Smokey knows that fire is good in the right place at the right time. So we need Smokey now today more than ever, 'cause Smokey has grown up, Smokey's matured, Smokey's learned about the need to put smoke into the air, and how the forest depends on having smoke in the air on a regular basis. And he also knows that we need to be fighting fire as aggressively today as we have at any time in the past, because the fires are burning so extreme and so damaging, that to allow for fires to burn unchecked today means killing off these forests that we now are responsible for managing under unnatural conditions. As I mentioned, they're denser, the fuel loadings are so much higher than they ever have been historically, and we don't want those fires to burn unchecked or unmanaged. Again, Smokey knows the right place and the right time to be managing fire. But he or she also knows when it is the wrong time, and when you should be fighting fire.

Kern: Does Smokey still work for the National Forest, or the Department of Agriculture?

Sheppard: Sure does!

Kern: He or she is still an active campaigner?

Sheppard: Yeah.

Sheppard: Apparently they found another [bear] last year up in Wyoming that went across the world through the BBC as having been burned on a fire, and they had its paws all wrapped. "Another Smokey has come to life." But Smokey is alive and well today. As I said, we need to have Smokey today more than ever: both to promote the management of fire through these fire-dependent ecosystems, but to know when to do it and when not to do it.

Kern: So where do you see yourself in the next five to ten years in regards to your career?

Sheppard: Well, I see myself pretty much where I'm at today. I've accomplished in my career a lot of things that I reflect back on as being very rewarding. In fire management, where I see myself today, and where I see myself growing in the next five to ten years in fire management will be in the air attack group supervisor position, and gaining more knowledge, more experience, sitting up there in the copilot's seat, and helping the firefighters on the ground by my experience. So I'll still stay fighting fire on the ground as division supervisor and operation section chief over the next five to seven years, but I know a body can only take so much, and the legs can't hold up forever. And when I can't go to the line any longer, I'll know it, and that's when I'll stay in the air exclusively and provide that service as an air attack group supervisor. That, to me, is where I'll find myself in the next seven to ten years as an air attack person. After I retire from the U.S. Forest Service—assuming that's where I end up when I retire—I'll go out and be available to provide that service then as an air attack in the private sector.

Kern: Full-time, you mean?

Sheppard: Available full-time to do it, after I leave the federal government, because I can go to work for states on contract as air attack person, or be available seasonally. I plan on possibly living in the southern states, especially Florida, in the wintertime, [when] they often have their fire season. And I would be available to dispatch out of Tallahassee or Atlanta as an air attack. And then summertime, keep my home here in Flagstaff and come back here during fire season in the West and be closer to the action then and available.

Kern: Do you see yourself retiring at any point, or do you think you'll just keep going until the end of it all?

Sheppard: No, but it's something you think about at this point in your career after twenty-some years. You have to start thinking about where you're going to be tomorrow.

Kern: I just don't see you as someone who would probably retire.

Sheppard: Retirement is a word that I think is just on a piece of paper that says you are leaving federal service. But that doesn't mean I'm leaving my career as a firefighter. I would never, I think, see myself doing anything else but fighting fire. Many people get really burned out on this after twenty years, and they don't want to have anything to do with it when they're done. Right now, on the contrary, I'm the opposite. I'm looking forward to the day where I can commit 100 percent to the firefighting efforts and fire management in this country. Right now, as I mentioned earlier in the interview, I have to split my time between my nine-to-five job as a wildlife biologist and my other job as a wildland firefighter in the role that I'm serving. And sometimes those come into conflict. The demands of the home office sometimes are overwhelming for me to accept an assignment, which is unfortunate, because I consider fighting fire my number one priority.

I've been trained, Jen, over the last twenty-three years to do what I do, and I do it very well. But it's taken years and years of training to get to where I'm at and a lot of years of experience to get to here. So if you wanted to look at it from a financial standpoint, the federal government's invested thousands and thousands of dollars in training a person like myself to be available to provide that service to the country. And I don't look on it as a nine-to-five job. To me it's been a 365-days-a-year job. I started [fighting] fires last year in Florida, in the year 2000, in March. I ended in North Carolina in November. And there were opportunities after that over the holidays to go to California, but I chose not to at the time. So what I'm saying is, I personally would prefer being 100 percent available for fire suppression/national emergency assignments. And that, to me, is a priority. So I try to get my job done at home as well and as quickly as I can, so I can be available to provide that service.

Kern: One last question. You're trained, as well, in hurricane management—or I don't know what you call it.

Sheppard: Right. Our national emergency team has responded to two hurricanes over the last ten years, and I went on a third hurricane as an individual resource. I started out on my hurricane assignments with Hurricane Andrew in 1993 in southern Louisiana. That storm hit Homestead, Florida, cut across the southern extreme of the peninsula there, headed back into the Gulf [of Mexico] and picked up more steam before it hit southern Louisiana. When it hit, they ordered both of our Southwest Area national teams to come into the southern Louisiana parishes and assist in the cleanup. After a hurricane comes in and blows through an area, it can be devastating to the infrastructure, to the transportation arteries of an area. We need to work with the communities there to help restore the basic services for the public. To do that, I was responsible for a geographic area of Iberia Parish. I needed to contract equipment to clean up the roads; get the power lines back into place, restore power in some places with generators, replace the power that was missing, with generators; but mostly to remove the vegetation that was blown down. There were tons and tons of oak vegetation that clogged the streets that needed to be hauled off and burned. And so that was my responsibility on Andrew.

Hurricane Opal was the next one I was assigned to, and there again I managed the generators, huge generators that were positioned in various places around the Panhandle of Florida. And then we were assigned most recently to Hurricane George that hit the Caribbean a couple of years ago. Two teams went into the Caribbean, Puerto Rico and the Caribbean National Forest. And our team stayed back stateside and worked out of Jacksonville, Florida—the naval air base there—and managed all the resources being shipped into the Caribbean islands that were affected by the hurricane. So there were three Type I national teams assigned to those hurricanes that hit the Caribbean that year. We found ourselves basically receiving and distributing. It's a role that I find very challenging, working hurricanes or other types of national disasters. But it all comes down to minding the basics of safety, of providing a service to a community, and effectively communicating with these people that are having to go through a traumatic time. And so you're there, again, providing service and understanding that it's pretty hard on these folks, and let's do the best job we can to help them out.

Kern: Why don't we pause for a little while, and then we'll talk some more outside. Thank you for sitting here so long. And then we'll be done.

Sheppard: [That was] a long time! It's noon! That went by fast. Just get me going, and I'll finish her off. (tape turned off and on)

Kern: A few more questions. I haven't gotten into, actually, with most of our interviews, interviewees… [What is] the effect of your career on your personal life?

Sheppard: Firefighting is a passion. The rewards certainly aren't financial. Some people are making a little money fighting fire, but if I wanted to make money, I wouldn't be in firefighting. There's something more that the inner soul, spirit, whatever you want to call it, derives from fighting fire. I think the satisfaction of safely fighting a fire, protecting homes, people's lives and property—all these things gives one a sense of accomplishment and knowing that you've contributed. You've done something that very few people get the opportunity to do. Again, it's that passion, the love of providing a service to the public, and going away from accomplishing a mission and having people thank you for keeping the fire from burning their barn up, or killing their cows, or burning into their town, even. We see them all the time, the signs along the road that say, "Thank you, firefighters." And you know, it's touching. You take something away from that, that you can't get in another position, in another job or career. It's just so satisfying.

What it's done for me, as a person, is I think it's built some real character, appreciation for small things in life. I look back on the career as being something that I wouldn't do any different. It does take a special person to get involved in firefighting. It's a commitment that's a lifetime commitment, and don't let anyone fool you—it's a 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year commitment. Last year I started [fighting] fires in Florida in March, and I ended in North Carolina in November, 120 days or more than that on the road on fires. It's hard on family. There has to be a lot of communication going on in your personal life with family and the people that care about you and that you love. Again, it takes a special person, and you need to be mindful of the costs of doing the kind of work that I do. It can take its toll, but at the same time it can also be the most rewarding thing that a person could ever do. I would counsel somebody very closely about considering firefighting as a career, before he or she decided that they wanted to do it. I'd say maybe try it, but also let them know that there can be costs along the way—not just physical costs from inhaling smoke and possible burns, and maybe even more serious injuries, broken limbs and things, because you're dealing in rough terrain. But there also can be costs to your personal life. Be sure you take care of that as a firefighter, because if there's one thing that oftentimes will affect a firefighter, it's a burnout, to borrow the term. They'll get burned out on it. These hotshots that do it for days and days on the road, I look at them and go, "My God, how are they able to handle that?" Not just the physical and the mental, but the personal side of it. How can they deal with that and still have a life? They love it that much. There are some that have been doin' the hotshot scene for twenty years before they give it up. And it's got to be takin' its toll. But again, you need to go into it understanding that there can be costs along the way; and to take care of yourself personally, physically, mentally. Take care of yourself, because it's a tough job, and it'll take its toll if you're not physically fit, mentally capable, and you've got things squared away on the home front.

Kern: You mentioned the importance of communication. How did you convey your message to your two sons, when you would be leaving and it was their birthday, or it was an event they were looking forward to having Dad there, how do you explain why you have to leave?

Sheppard: Ever since they could walk and understand, they knew Dad was a firefighter, and that he'd be gone during the summertime a lot, fighting fires. And I'd talk to them about why I do what I do, pretty much like I've talked to you today, Jen, about why I do what I do. So they understand up front that Daddy's taking risks, but he does his job well, and he'll be home, and he's going out to protect somebody else's home, or property, or the forest and the animals. I think having them know that their parent is involved in something that's contributing, that's helping people—that, I think, made a difference in how they felt about Dad being away, that he was out there doing something he loved.

Kern: Did they ever ask something along the lines of, well, you're helping all these other people and you're helping the families in Florida and California, but "I broke my leg! Where were you?!" Did you ever get something like that?

Sheppard: You know, they never did. They never did suggest that "you should have been here," because I made every effort to always be there. But when I couldn't be, I was as sensitive to their needs by calling home every day, sending them a card, sending them a gift. So I tried to be mindful of the fact that they're disappointed, even though they may not express it, in Dad being gone. They may be worried too, but they're not expressing it. So let them know that you're there. Those are some of the things that I would tell people going into the career. You need to communicate to your spouse, to your family, about the job that you're doing, and let them know you're okay, and that this is something you love to do. And pay attention to some subtle things going on there at home. It's hard to explain. You have to be there. But know when enough's enough and you've got to take a break. You've got to give the attention to the home front so that things are okay there too.

Fire has been a priority in my life, a number one priority, many times. But the ultimate priority is my family, my health, and taking care of myself. But when the fire season hits, and the fire order and calls are made, my life does change dramatically. And I go from being a wildlife biologist and father, to a firefighter. And it is a dramatic change. So it's almost like in the military: You're a soldier, you go off to war, and you fight a battle, you come home, and you are changed, you're a changed person. Very similar to fighting fire. I go off on fires, and I am totally focused on what I'm doing, and assuring that it's being done safely and efficiently; and with all those other factors in mind, protecting home, lives, and property. When I come home after working on a mission like that for two, three weeks at a time, it's difficult to adjust to the pace of life back on the home front. So you have to consciously slow down—slow down mentally, slow down physically. Remember who you're talking to: it's the people you love. And you cannot be talking to them like they're another firefighter. You can't bring your fire line language back home and put it into place in the kitchen. That's not the place for it, it's not a fire camp anymore—it's home. Even though your home was the fire line for three weeks, or flying in an aircraft for three weeks, you're now in your own home, and this is your other life.

Kern: So in terms of maintaining a relationship, would you say the same thing needs to be in place — a good system of communication?

Sheppard: Well, I think that is true. I think it's true in any relationship. We all can be better communicators at all levels. We need to work at that, and you need to talk about things, the needs that each of you have in the relationship, whether it's from father to son or husband to wife. And it's, I think, even more important in the fields of law enforcement, firefighters, in society. There's a real strain on family relationships when you're in careers like this. For it to be successful, it takes a lot of work. It's as demanding as the job itself, and you have to be giving it your attention all the time. It's, hopefully, something that can be mutually worked out. And the passion that I spoke about that I have for what I do, is something that I hope that my partner would appreciate that passion, and understand the passion I have for the career I've chosen. And she, at the same time, probably also has to have a high level of passion or love or desire for a career or a hobby—whatever it might be. If it's missing in your spouse's background or in her life, then there may be some problems on down the road. Difficult to explain, but it's something that you need to pay attention to, and be aware of, so that if you're seeing those problems creep into a relationship, that are straining on a relationship and don't seem to be working well together, then you have to make some decisions. Unfortunately, my relationship ended, but I even paid attention to it throughout that, with the children and all, making sure that they're okay throughout all of the times I was gone—even now, more so. Paying attention to the children and their needs, and being sympathetic to the needs of the spouse, even through a separation and divorce. That's important. And knowing that she was missing something in her life that I had in mine. I was not about to give it up. That was a choice and a decision I made, and she couldn't live with that decision. And so I had to let her go, and hopefully she would find something in life that she loved as much.

I am totally committed and devoted to my children. When I'm home, it's a thousand percent—they are number one. I will do anything for them. And so when you are home, make damned sure it's quality time, and it's not sitting in front of the tube, or whatever it is. Make it times that they'll remember, that they appreciate, that they know you're there, and then be with them. Don't just be there, but be with them, and let them know how much you care about them. That makes it so much easier when you go away then, because there's no question—there's no question—Dad is doing what he loves, but he loves us and he cares about us, and that's why he's doing what he's doing, 'cause he's happy. And if Dad wasn't happy, if he didn't have this in his life, Dad wouldn't be happy.

Kern: Yeah, and Dad probably would not be such a good Dad.

Sheppard: That's right. I mean, that's the vicious circle, it goes on and on. We know what's happening in society: there's absentee parents that just aren't there for their kids. I may not be there for 50-100 days a year on certain years, but that other 265 days, I'm there, and I am totally committed to those kids, and the family—both the family here and my family in Chicago—totally committed. It's like I am on fires—totally committed.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

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