Update from Idaho: Overwhelmed from my experience... coming home soon

Not much time - gotta sleep!

In short, one of the most challenging things I have ever done.

Top photo: Just stepped out after familiarizing myself with the Rattle- snake Fire via Llama (a kind of helicopter), during my first full day here. Second photo: The rough location of our fire is circled in red on this visible satellite picture (click for larger photo). YES, that's all wildfire smoke in Idaho! On September 3rd a couple days ago, what would have been an explosive day with extreme fire conditions was muted a bit - only because the explosive development to fires immediately to our south in Payette National Forest. Those southern fires sent an incredible amount of smoke over us, preventing full mixing of high winds and keeping temperatures from reaching their full potential. The western edge of our fire still took off a bit, because it was just outside the other fires' smoke plumes and received sunshine.

Sunset picture: Sunset that active evening, with heavy smoke overhead. We had ashfall here at camp... a light dusting on vehicles.

River photo: After almost two hours of driving a winding road, including 6 miles of hairpin turns down the Salmon River Canyon, we reached the "The River of No Return Wilderness." Someone today came across 5 bears there. As for me, I've seen a moose (on Moose Butte of all places), coyote, and muledeer.

Flying over the Rattlesnake Fire. You may have to click for the larger version if you want to see any actual flames on the lower right corner. This was on a day of fairly light activity.
Here's camp as seen before landing with the helicopter.

My trainer Jim and I digest the forecast from our office in Red River Forest Station.

Giving a weather briefing to residents of Orogrande, population 24-ish.

Tracking a "pibal" balloon. Elevation and Azimuth readings are written every minute, and we enter it into a computer program to get a profile of winds from the surface to (if we can follow the balloon long enough) 10,000 feet or so off the ground.

That's it for now. Expecting 20s for lows the next several nights! Lucky for me, I come home Saturday.

Marisa, Autumn, and Evan: Daddy can't wait to see you! -Mark

And to help Daddy...

...get through his last week in Idaho! We miss you and love you!

A Weekend Outing

The kids and I headed up to the Cleveland area this weekend to visit Grandpa Berry. The weather was beautiful! Nice to get away from our endless humidity here. The kids had a blast! Highlights included fishing (Evan actually caught a sunfish, which unfortunately I didn't get a picture of), swimming in the pool, and going to the fire station for a tour! We had a nice time.

Update from Idaho: Exhausted

Hi y'all. Just briefly: Working this other fire, buried very deep into the near-wilderness mountains and forests of central Idaho, has been very challenging and exhausting. Yesterday I was in a helicopter flying over the fire and very steep terrain. Today we did a public briefing for the threatened town of Orogrande, population roughly 20 (and about 80% of the them showed!). Expecting critical fire conditions Monday (very low humidity, very warm temp, gusts to 35 mph) but it will be followed by a dramatic cool down and possible significant rain Tuesday/Wednesday. Expecting to be able to come back home late this week. All I want to do is sit on the couch with Marisa and the kids, and watch Winnie the Pooh.

It's 11:10 p.m. Pacific Time. Gotta go to bed. I literally have no time to post anything else, I'll try again soon (including pics). My usual work hours here have been 5:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.

Google "Rattlesnake Fire" if you want to read up on what's going on!
-Mark

Update from Idaho: Likely Going to a Different Fire

Going to keep this brief, gotta go to bed! Biggest news is that management of this fire is downscaling to type 3, and it looks like they're reassigning me to another type 2 wildfire for the rest of my dispatch. Thursday, I drive to the Rattlesnake Fire near Elk City, Idaho. I'll post more about that later, probably well after I get there. This photo is from yesterday when my trainer Joe took me to 8000 ft elevation to get a better look at the Shower Bath fire.

Here are some small photos of the sights around camp and near the fire, click on them for bigger versions.
Coppery, smoky sunset a couple hours after a huge smoke column burst into the sky.

Chopper picking up water to douse a flank of the fire (not taken be me).

Check out the pyro-cumulus! Formed when heat of the fire made the air unstable. In the foreground is the mostly smoldering Shower Bath Fire... in the pyrocumulus is actually from the Red Bluff Fire, farther west behind the horizon.

Welcome to my office, hours 5:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. or so.

Camp life...

A Note to Daddy

I managed to grab the kids in one place at bathtime long enough for a photo greeting to send to their fire-chasing meteorological father! Evan wrote the sign on the right (though I helped him with the "M")! Both kids are writing their names well now; Autumn even informed me that one of her teachers wrote her name wrong, without the "n" at the end! We've been having fun - had a great three-day weekend with the kids and was back to work today. Yesterday we went to a wonderful free church-sponsored carnival that I read about in the local paper, and the kids had a blast. Today, their day care switched from day-camp mode to preschool, as all the kids here went back to school today. There were some new kids today, and Autumn reported she made a new friend. When I asked Evan at bed time what his favorite thing was today, he said "going to school" which helped me feel better about the guilt I was feeling for leaving them today! Well, I'm about to crash here - goodnight to all!

Idaho Wildfire Update: I made it here!

Well, after a flight cancellation and then sitting 3 hours on the runway in Atlanta during a lightning show, I finally arrived in Boise at 3:oo a.m. Eastern Time, after having got up at 4:15 a.m. the day before! After a good sleep, I drove about 5 hours to the Incident Command Post of the Shower Bath Complex, in Challis Idaho. I've been learning the ropes of an Incident Meteorologist since the minute I arrived yesterday afternoon. Today, the Fire Behavior Analyst took me out to the fire so I could get to know the situation a little better. The top photo shows how the heat of a wildfire can turn the side of a mountain into a lunar surface!

I was only close enough to the active burning to see smoke plumes rising from behind the mountain, while more minor smoke can be seen on the front. I also saw a pine tree torch up in seconds as the fire finished making its run up the terrain, but was not able to get it on camera.

Perhaps the biggest challenge in fighting the Shower Bath Complex (which includes the Shower Bath, Red Bluff, and Clear Sage fires) is the very rugged terrain. Take a look at the road the crew has to take to get to Shower Bath!

Well, I have to get to sleep, almost 10 o'clock. I'll try to update again in another 2-3 days. And now, a moment of appreciation for Marisa, who is holding down the fort with Autumn and Evan back home... Thank you, my sweet!

-Mark

WILDFIRE! Mark's been dispatched to Idaho

Just a quick update... which I am able to write because my initial flight got cancelled leaving me with a few spare hours.

I'll be near Challis, Idaho for the next couple of weeks... I've been dispatched to what is called the "Shower Bath Complex" which is a trio of wildfires in the Northeast Idaho Mountains. I'm in training to be an Incident Meteorologist (IMET), and this will be my first fire.

If possible, I will email Marisa photos and updates, and perhaps she'll be able to put some on the blog in coming days. But I will be very busy... 14 straight days, 14-16 hours of work/day. I'll be camped out with roughly 250 firefighters, incident staff, and support people. So far the trio of fires has burned about 110,000 acres, with an estimated containment date of September 30. It has also cost more than 20 million dollars to fight so far.

A few sites to try for more information:

http://www.inciweb.org/incident/934/

http://www.nazteam.com/assignments/index.html

http://www.challismessenger.com/

Wish me luck! And even more so... wish Marisa luck as she will be working her job AND taking care of the kids by herself until I get back.

-Mark

Photo credits: Smoke plume photo on right courtesy of the Challis Messenger (linked above), of the Shower Bath Fire. Fire photo at top from about a week ago, a different Idaho Fire (there are dozens going on right now), courtesy of the Great Basin Incident Management Team.

Vacation Photo Album

Our vacation to Michigan was just wonderful (the only problem being that we came home to a dead refridgerator at 3 a.m. Sunday morning! Here are some highlights from the week. Forgive the messy captioning; we are exhausted and wanted to get this post done before we hit the hay.
Evan excitedly swivels in a funky diner where we ate in Mackinaw City before boarding the boat to the island.

We had many beautiful sunsets and lovely weather on Lake Huron! This particular evening Mark and I went out on the raft to enjoy the sunset.

On our way back down, we had dinner with Great-Grandpa and the Drouillards. The evening was bittersweet though as two days before Marisa's cousin Jill was in an accident and has suffered severe damage to her leg. She has to keep it immobile for 6 weeks and face a second surgery. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers!

Uncle Joel took the whole week off to share vacation with us! We had so much fun with him there! Here Evan helps him mow. We love you Uncle Joel!

We were happy that Grandma Linda could come up for a day and night to join us! Here the kids enjoy beach time with their Grandmas.

We took a little trip to Ocqeoc Falls - not much when you're used to WV mountain falls, but the kids had a blast plunking around in the river... that is until Autumn got a soaker!

The last two days of our time at Grandma Laurie's cottage, Marisa's Aunt Mary came up with her granddaughters. The kids, whom we call cousins, had so much fun together, and the cuteness was out of control!

Mark and I got to go on a very romantic date to the Nautical Festival on Sunday night. Here we share a ferris wheel ride and get to know each other!

We had an amazing day on Mackinac Island. Here, Grandma Laurie strolls along gazing at the Mackinac Bridge. We rented bikes and rode around too, which was so quaint and fun!

Marley, Ellie, Evan, and Autumn get a free ride out to the sandbar!

Dad and Evan show off their blue eyes at a cute Italian restaurant where we snacked on the island.

Going On Vacation: Seeking Cooler Climate!

As much as we enjoy baking in the heat and humidity of a West Virginia August, today we ditch the popsicles and head for the cottage on Lake Huron (near Rogers City, MI)... meeting up with Grandma Laurie and Uncle Joel! We'll also be taking the exit ramp off of the Information Superhighway, but look for updates around August 13th-ish after we get back. In the meantime, enjoy the two new vid clips on the right:

1. Evan picks up WV Book and sings Country Roads - 1:25 - One of Mark's co-workers got the kids a WV book featuring the lyrics of that John Denver song "Almost Heaven... West Virginia" and it has become one of Evan's favorites.

2. Shortcake Antics - 0:35 -A quick clip as the kids try their best not to choke on strawberry shortcake while Daddy keeps making them laugh.

Also, in case you had missed them before, we put up a trio of videos in June: Learning 2 Bike, Trails & Tunnels of Grandview Park WV, and Roundin' Up a WV Hillbilly Dinner (squirrel chase). You can locate these on the right, under the two new video clips.

Adios, we're out the door! See you when we get back from Michigan.

-Mark, Marisa, Autumn, and Evan

Famapalooza crammed into 2 1/2 days

WOW. We got back Monday evening, after a 2 1/2 day trip full of family and friends! The kids usually handle travel well, but the trip last week Friday to Grand Rapids from WV took 12 hours because of traffic jams and multiple unplanned stops. Autumn and Evan whined and fought a lot on the way up... luckily, the way back from Detroit on Monday lasted only 8 hours and went quite smoothly.

But for having to make the arduous trip back and forth, we sure got everything in that we could! After arriving Friday night, we went to our family Reunion at Riverside Park Saturday afternoon. The reunion featured the remaining 2 out of 9 "kids" (my Grandpa and Great Aunt Josie) that were born of the original Sicilian immigrants, and a whole lot of the branches and twigs of the family tree from there. Nametags were used with geneology numbers displayed; a system that goes like this (see pic, click on for larger version): My Grandpa is number 6 because he was the 6th born of the original Sicilians... my Dad (a.k.a. his nickname Butch) has number 61 because he is the 1st born of the 6th born... my number is 614 because I'm the 4th born of the 1st born of the 6th born... etc. It was awesome to be able to make sense of the family tree in this way, including Autumn and Evan a.k.a. 6141 and 6142. With everyone wearing their numbers, it quite simply clarified the big picture for me, of how our immediate and more distant relatives fit all together... some of whom I hadn't seen in well over a decade (we missed the last reunion).

That same afternoon, we were able to run over to my Mom's house, which allowed a nice visit for the kids to see Grandma Linda and Nana. This was followed by a wonderful dinner sans kiddies for Marisa and me... with Joe, Judy, and even Marisa's brother Joel at the Bluewater Grille on Northland Drive!

The next day was our annual "Christmas in July" (picture at top of blog entry) hosted again this year by Joe and Judy... an afternoon full of food, opening presents, games, herding/referreeing the kids, and other general fun chaos. Mike and Rachel stopped by towards the end with their beautiful daughter Lauren (pictured here). Meanwhile, Brian and I did a "putt off" in frisbee golf... in which we bet punches. That's right, punches. Whoever lost, got punched in the arm. Guess who lost? The bruise finally went away a couple days ago...

Thus, our weekend came to a close... BUT WAIT, there's more! We drove Sunday evening over to Marisa's Mom's new apartment (well, new for me because I hadn't seen her in 7 months!). The next morning the kids eagerly swam at the community pool... you can see here that Evan has been bravely going under water lately. The swim was followed by a lunch gathering with a whole bunch from Marisa's side of the family, pictured below (including Ross and Dana, who the kids always love seeing).

And finally, the ride back home, and work/daycare the next morning. Phew! We were quite exhausted. The funny thing is, a week from now we are back in the car, on a LONGER Michigan trip all the way up to the cottage in Rogers City (near Mackinac Bridge). But this time, nothin' planned except to relax -n- enjoy. Ahh.... and this time, since I'm working midnight shifts up until then (I'll be accustomed to staying up all night), we're going to do a night drive to get there. Should be a bit easier.

-Mark

Changing Days

Our lives have changed quite a bit since I started work two weeks ago. I am loving my new job at HospiceCare, and though the kids had a rough week last week at day camp, today they showed no resistance when Mark dropped them off! This was a huge relief, as one day last week Mark almost gave in and put them back in the car! The kids always seem happy when we pick them up, and the teachers report that they're doing well, so we're happy.

The black and white photo above is from the July 4th, when we attended a small-town parade (Buffalo, WV). It began with at least a couple dozen blaring loud fire trucks - the kids had difficulty prying their hands from over their ears, to pick up the candy that was being thrown from the vehicles.

And...family time continues! The kids enjoyed a recent visit with Grandpa Berry, and this weekend we are traveling up to Grand Rapids for a family reunion and Christmas in July with Mark's side of the family! It will be a whirlwind but we are so excited to see everyone, and hopefully get over to our dear Lake Michigan for a dip. Bye for now!

Grandma Linda Visits! And more Rafting Pics...

Grandma Linda just left after a jam-packed 2 day visit to WV! Yesterday in particular, we crammed in everything possible: Library (drop off books), Kanawha Falls (deck photo on left with Grandma below), Cathedral Falls (top photo climbing around rocks with Grandma Linda, and black/white Daddy and Autumn photo below on right), Hawks Nest (nice views), New River Gorge (big bridge), Ellen's Ice Cream Shop (downtown Charleston, pictured up on left), Live on the Levee (downtown live music on the riverfront), and finally, the twins' first time seeing fireworks, at the Leonardi house (Chris L. works with Mark). Not bad for one day, especially considering that it began at the pet shop; we finally set up the 2.5 gallon aquarium that Grandma Linda got for us several months ago... and had Autumn and Evan pick out one fish each: Two guppies they named "Pooba" and "Simple Simon." Thanks so much for visiting, Grandma! We loved hosting you!

As for our previous set of guests... we promised more whitewater rafting photos in our last blog entry. Find a set of 16 photos in our Flickr Page (click on the link)! Some of the photos are a bit fuzzy because they were taken with a waterproof one-time-use camera.

Take a look at this picture of what all the fun did to Mr. Decker: he zonked out on the chair, while everyone else set him up for a pretty funny photo...