Picking up where they left off before the morning of the Crawley Fire, two members of the Veteran’s Fire Corps, Flagstaff, AZ (Bobby, Eric) began the long and back-breaking work of the Heckethorn Thinning Project, while the other three members (James, Davon, Brian) met with Fire Technician, Kristen Kolonoski, and assisted in the technical world of CBI Plotting (Composite Burn Index).
The Heckethorn Project began with thinning and clearing heavy thousand-hour snags and dead and downed trees on a peaceful morning, until the afternoon turned into a nightmare that brought one the worst storms of the year to Flagstaff’s monsoon season. Bobby and Eric followed Crew 4 down a treacherous mountain side, across a lightning prone meadow, and hid out within the trees and waited as the storm passed.
While half of the VFC Team and Crew 4 endured the storm in the Heckethorn area, the rest of VFC Flagstaff and Crew 4 enjoyed a peaceful afternoon in the Northern Coconino while conducting CBI Plots in the beautiful sunshine.
The rest of the week allowed both Crew 4 and the VFC Team to work together in completing the Heckethorn Project. Hundreds of yards of hand line were constructed, and a lot of heavy fuels were sawed, and cleared away from the fire line, in order to clear out and complete the preparations for this up coming burn project.
