Wildfires are impacting communities, towns, and cities more often and severely than when I joined my college fire crew in 1988. Drier, hotter summers became longer fire seasons, fire seasons became fire years. "It's fire season somewhere" is the norm. Today more people than ever are living with the threat of wildfires to their homes and livelihoods.

As fire years and decades passed, wildland firefighting became my career, as a hotshot and smokejumper. Documenting wildland firefighting operations and logistical support in photos and videos is part of what I do.

Today I lead crews and heavy equipment as a task force leader (TFLD $36/hr.) side-by-side with federal, state, local, and volunteers.
I've experienced great success limiting and preventing the type of wildfire destruction appearing in our collective memories. When a wildfire is un-fightable it is like a hurricane, tornado, or earthquake. But when wind and weather, fire behavior and topography enable us to engage wildfires, our success rate is better than 95%. I also serve as
a public information officer 'complex' (PIOC $58/hr.) working as
a member of an incident management team (IMT) assigned to the fire. 

I worked four wildfire seasons from 1988 to 1990, and 1992 with USFS Santa Lucia Crew 3, now Crew 7, based in San Luis Obispo, California, when I studied at Cal Poly University SLO.

I worked three wildfire seasons from 1993 to 1995 as a USFS Los Padres Hotshot, based in Santa Barbara.

I worked 17 wildfire seasons from 1996 to 2012 as a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Alaska Smokejumper based in Fairbanks. Since 2013, I've worked as a contracted firefighter, based in Boise, Idaho with my wife and two children. 

Education: San Mateo High School, CA 1985. Cal Poly San Luis Obispo CA: B.S. News Journalism, 1991. Boise State University, ID: Masters Certificate, Technical Communications, 2018.