On a cool Tuesday morning in late May, 20 members of the Entiat Hotshots wielded 25-pound chainsaws, tossed cut shrubs and small trees yards out of the way and chopped at the earth with Pulaskis.
In six hours, the men and women cleared a 10-foot-wide, half-mile-long path down a steep hillside on Tyee Mountain. Their goal was to carve a fire line for a future prescribed burn in the mountains west of their home base in Entiat.
This is the type of work that the Entiat Hotshots do when they aren’t called up to fight a wildfire. They’re on call from May 20 through Oct. 31, which is considered fire season. They can be ordered to fires anywhere in the United States.
In 2015, the crew fought mostly local fires, other than short stints in Alaska and Oregon. Among the local fires were the Wolverine Fire above Lake Chelan, which burned 65,512 acres; and the Okanogan County fires, which burned 450,000 acres. On those fires they conducted burnouts, built fire lines and performed structure protection.
The Entiat Hotshots are celebrating their 50th year, thankful to have had no fatalities among any of their crews.