Day 3 on the Neola North Fire

I've been on the Neola North Fire for a few days now. Today was spent completely in the "office" -- actually Mrs. Saxon's classroom in the Roosevelt Elementary. This has been an interesting experience. I spent most of today making map products and doing number crunching for the various specialties here on the fire.

For example, the folks doing the post-fire vegetation assessment were interested in vegetation mortality by ownership by vegetation group. We learned that about 4,000 acres of Lodgepole Pine burned on this fire, most of it on Forest Service lands, but only about 1/4 of it was high severity (> 75% of the vegetation on a particular site died).

It has also been good to see how the BARC product is used in the process. I think I could do this on a real assignment if asked. However, I don't think it'd be very easy to do it due to family and work needs. It'd be very difficult to give up 2 weeks for a fire assignment. And because I'm a contractor, I don't get the fancy overtime pay the rest of them get!