These crews can really take the heat!
Interagency Hotshot Crews (IHC) are diverse teams of career and temporary agency employees who uphold a tradition of excellence and have solid reputations as multi-skilled professional firefighters. Ninety crews are available for the 2001 fire season, employed by the US Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, various Native American tribes, and the states of Alaska and Utah. Their physical fitness standards, training requirements, operation procedures are consistent nationwide, as outlined in the Standards for Interagency Hotshot Crew Operations. Their core values of "duty, integrity, and respect" have earned Hotshot crews an excellent reputation throughout the United States and Canada as elite teams of professional wildland firefighters.

Hotshot Crews started in Southern California in the late 1940s on the Cleveland and Angeles National Forests. The name was in reference to being in the hottest part of fires. Their specialty is wildfire suppression, but they are sometimes assigned other jobs, including search and rescue and disaster response assistance. Hotshots not busy fighting fire will also work to meet resource goals on their home units through thinning, prescribed fire implementation, habitat improvement or trail construction projects.

The twenty-member Hotshot crews are often called Type 1 Crews, but are really Type 1 Crews-PLUS since they exceed the experience, training and physical fitness required for a Type 1 Crew. They may be sent anywhere in the United States, and have been to Mexico and Canada, to fight wildland fires. They can safely and efficiently use all fire tools including Pulaskis, chain saws, fusees, pumps, and engines, and understand and practice safe helicopter operations.

The Hotshot program also stresses each individual's responsibility and right to a safe work environment, correctly identifying critical safety issues and demonstrating appropriate responses to unsafe conditions. This includes instruction on risk management, firefighter safety, fire behavior, communications, job hazard analysis, fire shelter deployment, and field drills various fire suppression techniques.

Hotshots must also participate in physical fitness and conditioning programs and pass the Work Capacity Test at the Arduous level. The Arduous level fitness test requires the individual to perform a three-mile hike with a 45 pound pack in 45 minutes.

Individual crew structure is, to some extent, based on local needs using the following standard positions. A typical crew would include one Superintendent (GS-9), two Assistant Superintendents (GS-8), two Squad or Module Leaders (GS-6), and 15 Skilled Firefighters (GS-5) and Crew Members (GS-4). Qualifications for each position are outlined in the Interagency Hotshot Operations Guide.

All crews require that personnel be available 24-hours per day, 7 days a week during the fire season, which typically last six months. Fire assignments may require IHC members to be away from home for several weeks at a time. The crews travel, primarily in the West, by truck, van or plane. To get to the more remote fire sites, crews either hike or are flown in by helicopter. Crew members pack all the water and supplies needed for work shifts that frequently exceed eight hours, and may be 12 hours or longer. Crews sleep on the ground and are lucky to get a shower every couple of days.

Most hotshot crew positions are seasonal, with employment from May through October. Employment is occasionally available during the pre- and post-season depending on weather and financing. For more information on the Hotshot program, contact the Hotshot crew you are interested in working with. For more information see the links below or contact your nearest Forest Service office.

Perhaps you should really know what a Hotshot Crew does. The very term "Hotshot" means many things to many people. But those of us who recruit, train, and work Hotshots, the job title is anything but glamorous. From experience we know that fire-fighting is 90 percent physical labor for the Hotshot Crews. The nature of the work is demanding. Only those of high strength, agility, coordination, and stamina can cope with the sustained physical exertion required of the average Hotshot. As a Hotshot you will be required to not only produce physically but to live together, eat together, sleep together in close, crowded conditions. Complete compatibility is in itself a difficult challenge.

You must take orders, and carry those orders out at all times, day after day. The emotional strain is extreme and the competitive pressure of your peer group is always present. For a crew is only as good as it's weakest member! When not on fire duty, you will be required to engage in daily structured physical fitness training that consists of running three to five miles, coordination exercises, pushups, sit-ups, chin-ups, stretching, etc.

The rest of your day will be like every other day: hard labor using various hand tools, other duties include digging weeds, picking up garbage, cleaning up toilets, sharpening tools, piling brush, and other duties as assigned. You will be expected to be ready at all times to answer fire calls on the District or throughout the United States. This requires you to be on a twenty four (24) hour alert.

On the fire line, the Hotshot Crews are singled out for the most hazardous and difficult assignments. It is normal for Hotshot Crews to be on the first shift up to thirty two hours before relief is available. Succeeding shifts of up to 16 hours are necessary. On occasion you will be "spiked" out away from the main fire camp, thirsty, hungry, and sleeping on rocky ground, sometimes without even a sleeping bag. You will hardly have the luxury of washing your hands, much less facilities to bathe. You will be filthy, exhausted, underfed, and hurting. There will be no privacy, no sanitation, no shelter, and no doctors, however first aid is available.

The Hotshot Crew is so named because of the need for tough, knowledgeable, rugged individuals who can be sent ahead of the main contingent of ordinary labor crews, and independently construct holding lines around critical segments of the fire, hold their line, and survive with little or no support. You will be required to walk long distances, sometimes packing heavy loads, up and down extreme mountainous terrain, (carrying packs of hose, chainsaws, or backpack pumps) cut trees into shorter lengths, drag limbs and brush out of the fire's path: dig (3 feet to 10 feet wide) fire lines to mineral soil: build trenches; haul hose, pack heavy portable pumps and tanks; and burn out your line before the fire gets there: then start extinguishing spot fires over your lines. And that's not the end of it. The dirty work of mop-up begins; digging and scraping all hotspots out and extinguishing the heat source. Other features of the job are living and breathing smoke for days, contending with mosquitoes, ticks, gnats, flies, stump beetles, snakes, scorpions, spiders, rolling rocks and falling debris, thorns, and cactus. It is dirty, dusty, hot, and you are always sweaty and at times freezing cold. Hotshots travel all over the United States and Alaska, often seeing home only a few days a summer. We want the toughest and the best. Being a Hotshot can be exciting, but very challenging. Many people try out for the Hotshots and don't make it. This is not the time or place to get in shape, you must be in outstanding shape and mentally tough when you start work.





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