Norm Rooker’s Dispatches from the Wallow Fire

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Sign just outside of fire camp.

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Driving to the Pine Top Evacuation Center with the BAM and to do my part at the community meeting/nightly update.

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More community support.

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Community Meeting, over a thousand in attendance. Each night one of our PIOs, the Incident Commander or his deputy and the Apache county Undersheriff give a presentation on the fire progress, law enforcement/county emergency management decisions and then take questions from the audience. Quelling fear & stress through timely and accurate sharing of information.

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Supply Unit check out of emergency equipment, fire shelter and hand tool, etc.

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Morning fire camp briefing map. Each morning we begin with the days objectives and assignments at the 06:00 morning briefing, followed by section & Division briefings and assignments.

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Steve explaining to Bill where his crew was at various points during the fire. The colorful map behind them is a Progression Map made by overlaying each additional night's fire progress as taken by infra red camera at aprox 01:00 each morning and the computer assigns it a different color and overlays the new area on the previous nights IR photos.

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L-R, soundman, camerman, producer and Steve's Engine Boss, Pat.

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Part of interview of FF Steven Vickers by CBS news correspondent Bill Whitaker on Friday, the 10th.

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More backfiring burn operations.

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night shift burnout operations off of Hwy 260 taken on the way back from the Community meeting at the Pine Top Evacuation Center.

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This is officially known as a BAM or Big Assed Map. This really is a Federal Acronym. This is at one of the nightly community meetings where we are sharing with the area residents what the fire is doing and what we are doing to contain it and protect their properties.

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