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National Wildland Firefighter Day 2025
It’s officially 🌞 Summertime 🔥. That’s too hot for me, but not for the brave first responders who fight forest fires. Today is National Wildland Firefighter Day and I’m happy to salute them.
👨🚒 Hats Off To Heroes 👩🚒
My heroes are those who risk their lives every day to protect our world and make it a better place – police, firefighters and members of our armed forces. ~Sidney Sheldon
I have total respect for all of our first responders, but the focus of today’s National Day Of are next-tier excellent.
It’s not something I could ever have done and certainly can’t now, so I appreciate those who can and do.
The men and women who head into the woods to get wildland blazes under control are a special breed.
They’ve got that innate heroism of running toward the fire instead of away from it, so today we salute them for their bravery and service.
🌳🔥⛏️ Working The Fire Lines 🪓🔥🌲
What It’s Like To Fight Fires With Hands And Tools
There are different levels of response to wildland fires.
What’s depicted in the video above is a basic technique for keeping it from spreading.
Even though it appears fairly low-key in that video, we need to keep in mind that one guy digging a firebreak trench with his axe is only going to be able to cover so much distance by himself.
That fire line goes for miles in both directions. Even a team of him and his fellow firefighters can still only cover so much territory.
These fires are beyond terrifying at their most elemental, but even these little fire lines represent a dreadful threat to life and property.
Unfortunately, the only thing that can make something like this worse is to have some psycho deliberately setting a fire to serve as the focus of an ambush.
Firefighters responding to a pillar of smoke know they’re in for a rough day simply trying to put that fire out without having to deal with some homicidal maniac.
Sadly, things got worse this past Sunday.
Some nutter in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, deliberately set a fire on the outskirts of town to draw the firefighters into his sights.
After hours of fighting both him and the fire he started, they found his body but no manifest or explanation for his actions.
This video suggests a motive. It may be true or it may not. It’s certainly possible that we’ll never know.
Is this the chilling motive for the Idaho killer who gunned down firefighters?
🔥 It Can Move Anywhere 🪓
I’d rather fight 100 structure fires than a wildfire. With a structure fire you know where your flames are, but in the woods it can move anywhere; it can come right up behind you. ~Tom Watson
I’ve got to admit that no matter how devious, heinous or dreadfully brutal my villains may be, they’ll never be as stone cold evil as that guy who ambushed the brave firefighters in Idaho.
Fiction is a pale reflection of the true evil of bad people in the real world.
Be that as it may, I have a lot of reprehensible shenanigans in my book already and plenty more to come.
Part of it is my way of playing with stock characters, villain tropes and comic book tropes.
Part of it is a natural progression of “if I start this person in this situation, how do they react and where do they go with it“.
That’s what is known as “Discovery Writing”. That’s how I roll.
The unvarnished villainy of creeps in the real world? I just can’t top that, nor would I particularly want to.
There are some sick damn people around, but the only thing worse than them are the people who defend and release them over and over again.
#StopVotingForDemonrats
‘Nuff said…
That’s all for today. See you back on Saturday for something that can be hazardous in an entirely different way 👙🏖️