# Why You Aren't Seeing Falling



## slowp (Feb 1, 2010)

I just had a brain fart. I figured out why you aren't seeing any falling, and why at least one of the Piehl fallers is working in the rigging. 

The weather. They were filming during last year's heat wave. The fire precaution class must've kicked up a notch or two. When the weather is that hot and dry, you can't run a saw down in the unit. Falling is shut down. You can run a saw on the landing or road. They can keep yarding until 1PM with a gravity system...the carriage goes back downhill on it's own momentum meaning there's no moving block at the tailhold. 

Rygaards are in a wetter, cooler area, and they apparently use a buncher for cutting. You can cut with a feller buncher until 1PM also during hootowl. Hootowl is the the term used when the 1PM shutdown is in effect. You can work between 8PM and 1PM--hootowl.


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## Curlycherry1 (Feb 1, 2010)

That makes a lot of sense and during one point in the show they showed a meter stuck on "extreme" and I was thinking that looked a lot like a fire risk meter/sign.

So a saw muffler is enough to set your woods on fire out there? Give me good old midwest/east coast hardwoods where it is darn hard to get a fire going just about any time of year. And when they do catch on fire, pretty much only the rubbish on the ground gets burned, the rest survives and grows like gangbusters. You guys certainly do not have it easy out West do you?


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## turnkey4099 (Feb 1, 2010)

Curlycherry1 said:


> That makes a lot of sense and during one point in the show they showed a meter stuck on "extreme" and I was thinking that looked a lot like a fire risk meter/sign.
> 
> So a saw muffler is enough to set your woods on fire out there? Give me good old midwest/east coast hardwoods where it is darn hard to get a fire going just about any time of year. And when they do catch on fire, pretty much only the rubbish on the ground gets burned, the rest survives and grows like gangbusters. You guys certainly do not have it easy out West do you?



All saws have to have spark arrester screens also. Now they seem to come standard, back when I had to buy them as an addition.

Harry K


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## joesawer (Feb 1, 2010)

Slowp, Do you have PAL levels there?
Down south the FS issues daily project activity levels depending on fire risk.
The range from A to E with exemptions.


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## slowp (Feb 1, 2010)

Oregon and Warshington have the same or similar Industrial Fire Precaution Levels. They are numbered from 1 to 4 or is it 5? We seldom have ever got past a 3 here. Each level has requirements. A 1 just basically means official fire season is in effect, there's a one hour fire watch required after the equipment is shut off, and you need to have your spark arrestors, fire truck, and everything else. 

A 2 means a partial hootowl. Fallers and yarders shut down at 1PM, and so on. Around the time of the heatwave, we were in a level 3 and some of the lower state lands were totally shut down. The yarder side I was working with had to shut down because they were downhill yarding so were using a haulback line with running blocks. Had they been uphill yarding, they could have kept going. 

They spent a couple of days packing rigging and getting trees rigged up during the shutdown. I had to be out with them and even though we were out there at daybreak, it was HOT.


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## boltonranger (Feb 1, 2010)

*eh?*

I don't understand - Do you mean 8pm to 1am? 
-br


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## RVALUE (Feb 1, 2010)

Curlycherry1 said:


> That makes a lot of sense and during one point in the show they showed a meter stuck on "extreme" and I was thinking that looked a lot like a fire risk meter/sign.
> 
> So a saw muffler is enough to set your woods on fire out there? Give me good old midwest/east coast hardwoods where it is darn hard to get a fire going just about any time of year. And when they do catch on fire, pretty much only the rubbish on the ground gets burned, the rest survives and grows like gangbusters. You guys certainly do not have it easy out West do you?



Hence the term: 

It's tough out west.


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## slowp (Feb 1, 2010)

boltonranger said:


> I don't understand - Do you mean 8pm to 1am?
> -br



Nope. I'll put it this way. They must shut down at 1 in the afternoon, and if they wanted to, but nobody does, they could start up again at 8PM. So, what happens is the crew is up in the unit at daybreak.


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## 2dogs (Feb 2, 2010)

In Collyfornia we have Red Flag days when you can't do anything harardous. Here is a link re Red Flag days.
http://www.fire.ca.gov/communications/communications_firesafety_redflagwarning.php


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## Metals406 (Feb 2, 2010)

slowp said:


> Nope. I'll put it this way. They must shut down at 1 in the afternoon, and if they wanted to, but nobody does, they could start up again at 8PM. So, what happens is the crew is up in the unit at daybreak.



Yup, during Hootowl we were over the hill a 6am, and done at 1pm. . . Then we sat there for 2 hours on fire-watch before we could go home.


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## Humptulips (Feb 2, 2010)

*Funny story about hoot owling*

We had a show on Quinault Ridge and it was very hot. I guess that follows with the hoot owl theme. Anyway I had two brothers setting chokers and they were young and liked to party. Well, we were on 1:00 shutdown everyday so they hit the bars and the next morning they were in pretty bad shape. One of them was puking out of the side door on the way up the hill. It was a pretty rough day for them and they were really looking forward to 1:00 About 12:30 the foreman poked his head over the hill and yelled down that they had took the hoot owl off and we were working 'till 4:00 (9 hour day). Them boys looked like someone had shot them. I'd get done in the back end and come up and spell them or I don't know if they would have made it. I heard one of them swear he would never drink again in his life. You have to understand the weather hadn't changed a bit. The next day we went back on hoot owl and 1:00 shutdown.


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## slowp (Feb 2, 2010)

Yes. I've shown up and had a crew begging me to tell the yarder engineer it was hootowl so they could go home early. I didn't. 

It is a bad thing in September. The days are shorter so it is hard to get a full day in for them.


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## joesawer (Feb 2, 2010)

Humptulips said:


> We had a show on Quinault Ridge and it was very hot. I guess that follows with the hoot owl theme. Anyway I had two brothers setting chokers and they were young and liked to party. Well, we were on 1:00 shutdown everyday so they hit the bars and the next morning they were in pretty bad shape. One of them was puking out of the side door on the way up the hill. It was a pretty rough day for them and they were really looking forward to 1:00 About 12:30 the foreman poked his head over the hill and yelled down that they had took the hoot owl off and we were working 'till 4:00 (9 hour day). Them boys looked like someone had shot them. I'd get done in the back end and come up and sell them or I don't know if they would have made it. I heard one of them swear he would never drink again in his life. You have to understand the weather hadn't changed a bit. The next day we went back on hoot owl and 1:00 shutdown.





Down south they rate it from A to E.
A it has been raining or snowing for a while and is till doing it. E nobody does anything. D with an exemption sounds like your hoot owl days.
In Oct 07 we where under a level C which is pretty mild. But they missed the forecast and 50 to 70 mph winds out of the east came in. Very warm and crispy dry. The wind was so bad it was rippling the sheet metal on the hood of my truck driven to work.
When I got there I decided I was not working no matter what the PAL level was. The wind was so strong you had trouble having a conversation. 
The boss got mad and started telling me I had to. I told him to get some one from The FS to put it in writing and I might think about it. He called the FS rep over the job and evidently was called some unkind things.
Then we got the call that we needed to go home that we where being evacuated for fire.
That morning dozens of fires broke out in the area and it was just a level C.
Some times the best guess should not over rule common sense.


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## Humptulips (Feb 2, 2010)

I think it was hoot owl all along and someone just wanted to teach them boys a lesson.
I went to work one time and there was a terrific east wind and really dry. I took the humidity at 5:00 AM before the sun even came up and it was 8% in the timber. We worked 'till 10 when someone came up and run us out of the woods. I knew it was too dry but the guy we were working for over ruled me. He had empty trucks on the landing and didn't want to send them home empty.

Hey Slowp, up in your area. Murray Pacific


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## slowp (Feb 3, 2010)

Probably related to one of the fire guys that used to work here. He used to use us timber people to help out for burning. We got overtime pay and he got bodies. He'd walk around at the end of our day, and be flicking a bic lighter, which meant an "evening" broadcast burn. We'd stop at the mini mart for more food, and head up. The evening burns usually got away and became early morning burns. Then we'd hurry home, try to get a few winks of sleep, and head out and do our timber work. May and June and part of July were sleep deprivation months.

One weekend, I got a phone call to go help burn. It was when we had the letter precautions and I think we were in a D or an E. Our crew was mumbling about the fire guy being insane. We got up to the unit, which was by Murray ground, and hunkered down to wait. The wind was howling and the boss was saying we'd wait a bit for it to die down. It was still crazy to be there. Finally, we were relieved, the district Ranger called him on the radio and told him not to light the unit. 

Another time, he phoned, I went and saw there were only 5 of us who responded. He said that was enough, it was a flat unit. We went, I got the girl job of running pump. I made myself comfy, got the pump going and read about 2 pages of my book. The wind came up. I saw puffs of smoke outside the unit, and radioed the others and began running around taking care of the spots. Within a few minutes, there were more spot fires than we could handle, so he had to radio for more help. My comfy job was no more. We had a lot of hose to drag around and the easy Sunday burn turned into a night time smoke chasing exercise.


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## joesawer (Feb 4, 2010)

slowp said:


> Probably related to one of the fire guys that used to work here. He used to use us timber people to help out for burning. We got overtime pay and he got bodies. He'd walk around at the end of our day, and be flicking a bic lighter, which meant an "evening" broadcast burn. We'd stop at the mini mart for more food, and head up. The evening burns usually got away and became early morning burns. Then we'd hurry home, try to get a few winks of sleep, and head out and do our timber work. May and June and part of July were sleep deprivation months.
> 
> One weekend, I got a phone call to go help burn. It was when we had the letter precautions and I think we were in a D or an E. Our crew was mumbling about the fire guy being insane. We got up to the unit, which was by Murray ground, and hunkered down to wait. The wind was howling and the boss was saying we'd wait a bit for it to die down. It was still crazy to be there. Finally, we were relieved, the district Ranger called him on the radio and told him not to light the unit.
> 
> Another time, he phoned, I went and saw there were only 5 of us who responded. He said that was enough, it was a flat unit. We went, I got the girl job of running pump. I made myself comfy, got the pump going and read about 2 pages of my book. The wind came up. I saw puffs of smoke outside the unit, and radioed the others and began running around taking care of the spots. Within a few minutes, there were more spot fires than we could handle, so he had to radio for more help. My comfy job was no more. We had a lot of hose to drag around and the easy Sunday burn turned into a night time smoke chasing exercise.





Lol isn't it funny how lighting a fire seems to bring the wind.


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## Gologit (Feb 4, 2010)

joesawer said:


> Lol isn't it funny how lighting a fire seems to bring the wind.



No. :censored::censored: It sure happens, though.


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