At 12:04 PM 6/24/2002 -0700, you wrote:

>allowed. I would think that the Forest Service would
>want any volunteer who is capable of using a shovel
>for a few hours.

It is really safety issue.  Having untrained people out there is really 
more dangerous than helpful.  There are things that volunteers can do, but 
I would not want them out on the front lines of a fire.

When I was fighting fires in Idaho, we would regularly "draft" loggers into 
service but they were there for one thing only, to man a chain saw and fall 
whatever trees we told them to.  We also had National Guard from time to 
time, but even though the meant well, I always hated having them 
there.  They had a real problem taking direction from people other than 
military, and they were not trained on how to really fight a fire.  The 
worst thing that ever happened to us was when we had a really big fire and 
they were so desperate for bodies that they hired anyone that they could 
find.  We ended up with 200 people literally overnight that had never been 
on a forest fire.  We had a lot of people hurt that first day and the 
helicopters were more busy evacuating injured people instead of dropping 
water where needed.

As I said, there are a lot of things that volunteers and untrained people 
can do.  We would have them delivering food and water to the front line 
guys.  They would drive the "6-pack" crew trucks to move crews from one 
place to another.  We would also have people like logging truck drivers and 
chip truck drivers driving tanker trucks back and forth to deliver fire 
fighting water.  We even had them doing things like sharpening chain saws 
and hand tools.


Scott
Team My Blue Heaven
www.myblueheaven.com/geocache