ANACONDA, MT– Anaconda JCCCC students and staff start ramping up for fire season typically after they’ve completed their annual spring training in June.  However, this year, students and staff answered two separate calls and headed to two separate fires in mid-May.

On May 14, one Anaconda JCCCC culinary arts instructor took four students to the Rumsey Gulch Fire, just over the hill from Center.  The group made up a Kitchen Crew, ordered to support the state kitchen which catered the incident.  As Kitchen Crew, students are designated as Technical Specialists and receive a higher wage than the other opportunity offered as Camp Crew.

Pictured below are Timothy Sheehan, left, and Kiven O’Connell, who make sandwiches for the sacklunches headed to firefighters on the Rumsey Gulch Fire.

On May 16 the Anaconda JCCCC sent one staff and ten students as a Camp Crew to the Sweats Complex near the capitol city of Helena Montana. Upon torrential rains two days into the incident, the crew returned to Center.

If the month of May is any indication for the rest of the season in Montana – which historically begins to pick up around the end of July – then spring training is going to be extremely important for the majority of the JCCCC located on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest (BDNF) in southwest Montana.

On June 21, associating BDNF put together a handcrew to fill orders to Arizona/New Mexico region.  One Anaconda JCCCC student, with training from last year’s crew, was assigned as part of the 20-person team headed south.  Enroute, they were diverted to Montrose Colorado, where they are staging and prepositioned to fight fires as they happen. They are reinforcing the local crews that are already overextended at this early point in fire season 2013.

Two days later, on June 23, Dillon Interagency Dispatch Center (DIDC), ordered up two Anaconda JCCCC Camp Crews to assist with incidents occuring around Del Norte Colorado. Two staff took a crew of ten students each and were bussed south to fill their 14-day assignment. 

A heightened awareness is no doubt in the air at Anaconda JCCCC for the upcoming fire season in Montana and the West.