250 soldiers from Joint Base Lewis-McChord join Idaho wildfire-fighting effort

U.S. Army soldiers with the 14th Brigade Engineer Battalion walk a grid pattern fighting the Boulder Fire in Idaho’s Boise National Forest on Aug. 22, 2024. (Clark Corbin/Idaho Capital Sun)

BOULDER FIRE, BOISE NATIONAL FOREST – Up since 5 a.m., U.S. Army First Lt. Andrew Harvey’s cheeks and yellow fire-resistant shirt are streaked with ash as he walks a grid pattern along the fire line, searching for any signs of heat.

It’s Harvey’s first time fighting a real wildfire, and he wouldn’t rather be anywhere else.

Harvey is one of 250 active duty U.S. Army soldiers who arrived in Idaho last week to help fight five wildfires that are burning in and around the Boise National Forest.

Collectively, the West Mountain Complex fires have burned more than 30,000 acres, threatened structures and mandated the closures of highways, forest service roads, trails and popular recreation areas such as Warm Lake.

“This is a mission set that actually helps us save American people, help American people reduce property loss and save some lives,” Harvey said in an interview with the Idaho Capital Sun at the Boulder Fire line on Thursday. “So all my guys are super excited, pumped up to be here. And honestly, it’s a privilege to be out here with you guys.”

The soldiers are from the 14th Brigade Engineer Battalion from Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington. An additional 63 support personnel, including civilian and military personnel, are also part of the Army’s response, said Capt. Eric N. Smith of the U.S. Army North Public Affairs Office.

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U.S. Army soldiers providing support to firefighters already on the ground

The Army soldiers are supporting the wildland firefighters and U.S. Forest Service personnel who have already been fighting the West Mountain Complex. Altogether, there were 1,048 people responding to the five fires in Idaho’s West Mountain Complex on Friday, firefighters said.

“We got out here about a week ago, and we’re just out here supporting the (National Interagency Fire Center),” said U.S. Army Sgt. Nicholas Hage, who is fighting his first major wildfire. “We’re helping out any way we can – working with the hot shots, pulling holes for places, trying to put out some of these smaller things before they start getting going. We’re trying to preserve the forest out here. We’re trying to protect the homes of the people who live by you know. All-in-all, we’re just trying to save whatever we can.”

Hage said he just joined the 14th Brigade Engineering Battalion just a few weeks before deploying to Idaho, and initially wasnt sure what to expect.

“I was expecting a whole different animal,” Hage said. “But it’s really great working with the guys who do this job, and they’re giving us a lot of great insight. We can look at something like, ‘Hey, this is how it’s going to work. This is what’s going to happen. You don’t have to panic.’ And so we’re spreading that across our guys, and we’re all learning so much and really putting in a good effort to control, contain and help out everywhere we can.”

Even though several soldiers who spoke the Sun said it was their first time fighting a wildfire, the soldiers said their Army training and experience prepared them.

“Luckily, our Army training does assist us with being able to train on firefighting stuff,” Harvey said. “Even though it’s not the same stuff, the communication skills that we learn in the Army are very similar, and then our language is very similar.”

Prior to deploying to Idaho, the Army firefighters completed training at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Harvey said. They followed that up with additional field training upon arriving in Idaho.

“So overall, a lot of guys are new to the wildland firefighting thing, but we’re not new to walking in the woods, we’re not new to using hand tools to dig out, because these engineers are trained to provide mobility, countermobility and survivability to the Army out when we’re deployed,” Harvey said.

The Boulder Fire is one of five lightning-caused fires that make up the West Mountain Complex that is burning in the Boise and Payette national forests. The Boulder Fire started Aug. 5 and is located about nine miles southwest of the town of Cascade. As of Friday, the Boulder Fire has burned 2,305 acres, with containment estimated at 44%, according to the Great Basin Team Two InciWeb report on the fire.

Army veteran teams up with active duty soldiers fighting Idaho’s West Mountain Complex fires

U.S. Army veteran Sam Bowen is helping lead crews of U.S. Army firefighters who are helping with the response to the Boulder Fire in Idaho. Bowen is superintendent of the new all-veteran Mark Twain National Forest Veteran Crew that is based in Missouri.

“We bring in six to eight new veterans every year,” Bowen said. “We give them about three weeks worth of training, and then work them on our crew. And then, after a season with us or a year with us, we then get them placed in positions on other Forest Service crews or other agencies’ crews.”

On the Boulder Fire in Idaho, Bowen is working as a military strike team leader, helping manage resources and leadership.

“So each morning, we have our briefing, figure out where we’re going,” Bowen said. “Then as the strike team leader, we break up the crews and put them in on whatever different missions we have. Sometimes they’re all working together. Sometimes we’re split up, depending on what the job is for the day. And then delegate those missions down to the individual crew.”

Bowen was an infantryman in the U.S. Army for almost five years – 27 months of which he spent in Iraq.

When he was preparing to leave the Army, a childhood friend of Bowen’s found the job and told Bowen to look into it.

Initially, Bowen wasn’t sure what to expect, but gave it a shot and committed to staying for a fire season. Now, Bowen has been fighting fires for 15 seasons. He has fought wildfires in every Western state, including the 2021 Dixie Fire in California – one of the largest and most destructive fires in California history.

Bowen said working with veterans from across the country with the Mark Twain National Forest Veteran Crew has changed his life.

“I would say, you know, especially after getting out of the military and coming home after Iraq,” Bowen said. “My first season was in a forest service veteran program, and I got to be around a lot of other vets, and it really helped my transition back to the civilian workforce, yeah. And being able to just have that camaraderie and support network and a mission to feel like we’re really doing good work for the American people, it gives you a lot of purpose. I definitely also saw a lot of people that came through the same program as me that were really struggling and I think this job saved them.”

Harvey, an active duty Army soldier, said it is great fighting the fire with a military veteran and experienced firefighter like Bowen.

“It’s definitely helpful for all of us, being able to integrate, especially with the Mark Twain vet crew, because they’re veterans, they speak the same language as us, so they can relate it back to what we know,” Harvey said.

Wildland firefighters experience long, smoky days in rugged terrain

Each morning the soldiers fighting the fires in Idaho wake at 5 a.m., dress quickly in their yellow and green flame-resistant clothing, eat breakfast and receive a briefing for the day. The soldiers wear hard helmets, long sleeves, long pants, boots and gloves.

Everything they need for the day, including a gallon of water, lunch and a fire shelter, is packed into a blue backpack that they shoulder and carry through the steep, mountainous terrain of the Boise National Forest.

Soldiers are served two meals a day for a total of about 6,000 calories because of the work they do and energy they need to do it, Smith said.

The soldiers sleep in tents about a 25-minute drive away from the fire line and call “lights out” at 10 p.m. in anticipation of waking up at 5 a.m. the next morning to do it all again.

Part of the soldiers’ work involved walking grid patterns along the fire line, looking for hot spots or burning embers to mop up, some of which could be several feet underground. When some finds burning embers or a hot spot, they yell out “Hold for heat!” and the entire crew stops while they assess the situation and how to deal with it.

To do their work, the soldiers carried hand tools for digging and clearing that they sharpened with files, chainsaws and portable backpack pumps filled with water.

“We feel the ground for any heat that’s coming up, and if we do find some, we dig it up, we douse it with water,” Hage said. “If we have (a hot spot) we turn it up, make it nice and cool, and keep on going to make sure this area doesn’t flare back up and push into an area where we don’t want it.”

U.S. Army soldiers fighting the Boulder Fire told the Sun that they expect their assignment fighting fires in Idaho to last for 30 days.

Bowen, the veteran firefighter and military strike team leader.

“The crew has been pretty busy,” Bowen said. “They’ve been getting a lot of great work done every, every day that we’ve been here. We’ve been mopping up a lot of heat yesterday. This crew specifically found about a dozen spot fires outside of the line. They caught all those to keep those fires in the box that we’re trying to keep it in, called in the helicopter and rank bucket work. A lot of valuable work has been done.”

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This article was first published by the Idaho Capital Sun , part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Idaho Capital Sun maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Christina Lords for questions: info@idahocapitalsun.com . Follow Idaho Capital Sun on Facebook and X .