What It's Like To Fight Fires With Hands And Tools | Insider Docs

(Narrator) Stopping some
of the largest wildfires

comes down to the fire line.

(Mike) So I'm trying to separate the fire

from the fuel that it's burning.

So by creating this dirt path,

I'm actually stopping
the forward progress of the fire.

(Narrator) Wildfire seasons
are starting earlier

and lasting much longer
than usual in the US.

It feels challenging because
these fires are very large

and resources are stretched thin.

(Narrator) Oregon's Bootleg Fire
has burned through an area

more than double
the size of New York City,

and firefighters are working
long hours to put it out.

(Mike) We've got to have people
or bulldozers on the ground

to stop the spread of the flames.

(Narrator) We followed them for a day
to see what it's like.

Nearly 2,000 people

are working to contain the Bootleg Fire.

Crews from New Mexico,

the Oregon National Guard,
and Alaska are all here.

(Mike) Your day starts at about 5 a.m,
and you find out

what your assignment is for the day,

and then it usually involves
a long drive to your division.

Constructing direct fire line

is the best way to stop
a fire from advancing.

And this is a low-intensity
burn through pine needles,

but it looks like it's pretty thick.

(Narrator) The fire here may seem mild,

but if little pockets of
vegetation are left burning,

the flames can expand
in unpredictable ways.

(Mike) And we can see

how it's stopping the spread
of the fire right here

because there's nothing
left for it to consume

once it hits this dirt fire line.

Depending on what type
of firefighter you are,

your day would consist
of about 12 to 14 hours

of doing that.

Here's an area that would
require a lot more attention.

This is a dead and downed tree stump,

so you can see
the fire's going to consume that

and probably stay burning
for many hours, maybe days.

So this would require water

or just a nice fire line around it

and letting it burn out by itself.

(Narrator) But some parts of the forest
can still be salvaged.

There's not a lot of slashed
or fallen trees

on the ground here,
so there's not ladder fuels

to carry the fire into the tree tops.

So these trees are going to survive.

Most of them are going to survive this.

(Narrator) Mike also
has a plan for survival,

since the change in winds
could make flame spread more quickly.

(Mike) I need to have
my escape routes in place.

And at this time, my escape route

is back down this short piece
of fire line to the road.

I'm in my 33rd fire season.

I'm 54 years old.

So I've fought probably more than 300,

350 fires or so.

(Narrator) The Bootleg Fire
has been burning since July

and isn't expected to be
contained until October.

But this land will take
much longer than that to recover.

Kind of looks like a graveyard

of big trees and little trees.

Those were tall trees

that just burned down to
toothpicks, basically.

But it was obviously very windy

and was driven through the treetops
from top to bottom.

The embers from the pine
needles and the branches,

they're just flying for probably
a quarter-mile, half-mile,

and starting fires ahead.

So that in turn feeds
the fire that's coming.

So it's just,

it's like leapfrog at that point.

You know, once they get
a lot of rain here,

growth will begin.

It already is.

But it's going to take some
decades for those to come back.

(Producer) So how do we contain a fire
like the Bootleg Fire?

One foot at a time.