14
SPECIAL FEATURE: INTO THE FIRE
Into the Fire
DEWITT NATIVE MORGANE RIGNEY ON FRONT LINES OF WESTERN WILDFIRES David Tyler
F
ive years ago, Morgane Rigney was working in Syracuse handling emergency calls at a security monitoring company. The 2008 Jamesville-DeWitt graduate liked her job – enjoyed the intensity that came with being in a high-pressure environment – but sought something more. “I had a mid-twenties crisis where I asked ‘Do I want to be doing this for the rest of my life?’” she said. When her inner voice answered back ‘no,’ it was clear that a change was needed. A friend was living in Flagstaff, Ariz., working on a trail crew there. She asked Rigney to join her, and she jumped at the chance. She spent a year working on the trail crew, and loved working outdoors, but wanted something more challenging, so when recruiters from the fire service came around, she took the chance. Four years later, she’s glad that she made the jump. Rigney is a member of Mormon Lake Hotshots, based in Flagstaff, one of 110 mobile Hotshot crews in the country who specialize in fighting wildfires. The Hotshots are a part of the U.S. Forestry Service and were originally formed in California in 1940. They’re nicknamed the Hotshots because they often work the most intense parts of a wildfire and earned fame from the feature film Only The Brave. Rigney recently returned to Flagstaff from fighting the Bobcat Fire in the San Gabriel Mountains near Los Angeles, which had burned nearly 115,000 acres and consumed more than 200 structures, killing one person.
Prep, Burn, Hold
In late September, Central New Yorkers may have noticed the haze of high-elevation smoke from the fires out west. This fire season, and each of the past few seasons have been some of the most intense on record, with millions of acres and thousands of homes and structures being consumed by wildfire. The number and size of the wildfires this season have caught the attention of the nation, but for Rigney, now a senior firefighter with the Hotshots, the intensity of the job remains the same. “Even though there’s a ton of big fires all over the region,” she said, “at the end of the day, that’s not going to change our tactics that much, because we can only fight one fire at a time.” The Mormon Lake Hotshots are a 20-person team that makes up a small but critical component of fighting a massive fire like the Bobcat Fire. Rigney estimated there were 800 people on that fire, with about 100 in support providing food and supplies for teams on the ground fighting the fire. While the job changes from fire to fire based on the terrain and vegetation, the plan usually revolves around three major tasks: Prep, Burn, Hold. “On the truly massive fires, nobody’s going to be at the front of the fire trying to stop it,” Rigney said. Instead, after evaluating the terrain, they put together a plan for containment to determine where they’re going to make a stand against the raging flames. Continued on page 16 November 2020
Philanthropy Edition
