During West End's training night we went over the proper way to fight a brush fire.

We discussed why and when we perform controlled burns. Fire is a natural part of both forest and grassland ecology and controlled fire can be a tool for foresters. Hazard reduction or controlled burning is conducted during the cooler months to reduce fuel buildup and decrease the likelihood of serious hotter fires. Controlled burning stimulates the germination of some desirable forest trees, and reveals soil mineral layers which increases seedling vitality, thus renewing the forest. Some cones, such as those of Lodgepole Pine and Sequoia, are serotinous, as well as many chaparral shrubs, meaning they require heat from fire to open cones to disperse seeds.

We discussed the use of firebreaks and the different types. One of the primary techniques is back burning which involves starting small fires along a man-made or natural firebreak in front of a main fire front. Back burning reduces the amount of fuel that's available to the main fire by the time that it reaches the burnt area.

Back burning is utilized in controlled burning and during wildfire events. While controlled burns utilize back burning during planned fire events to create a "black line", back burning or backfiring is also done to stop a wildfire that is already in progress. Firebreaks are also often used as an anchor point to start a line of fires along natural or man made features such as a river, road or a bulldozed clearing. It is called back burning because the small fires are designed to 'burn back towards the main fire front' and are usually burning and traveling against ground level winds.

A controlled burn was then started, we had a man made firebreak via a bulldozed area and we utilized back burning to control the area that was burned.