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Keeping an eye on the forests of Lesser Slave
M. Partington-Richer
For the Lakeside Leader
If Rob Green had known that it might someday be a way to get close to his future wife, perhaps he wouldn’t have balked when his dad suggested he become a Junior Forest Ranger. Or not.
But a decade and a half later, the former Rocky Mountain House teen finds himself perched close to the top rung of Slave Lake’s forest protection ladder, married and pleased to be there.
Green is the Wildfire Operations Officer at the Sustainable Resource Development office in Slave Lake. He took over the role just over a month ago when former honcho Ken Orich stepped down. And while he says the job has presented few surprises, he admits that having a team of close to 150 fire suppression personnel is sometimes almost intimidating.
Ironically, he says he really wasn’t too interested when his Dad suggested he become part of the JFRs when he was a teen in Rocky Mountain House.
“He had a friend in forestry (the SRD office), but I didn’t want to go at first,” says Green. But the teen relented, and it wasn’t long before he was ‘bitten’ by the fire bug – the fire suppression bug, that is.
“And I’ve been doing it ever since.”
The JFR program gave him a chanced to see helitack (helicopter-riding wildfire attack) crews in action. At 16, Green wasn’t old enough to apply to join that group, but was quick to do the necessary paperwork as soon as he turned 18.
He managed to garner a spot in the helitack group that year, and for the next four years worked with the initial suppression crews at the Rocky office. In the winter, he headed to school; the College of New Caledonia, in Prince George, British Columbia to learn all there is to know about wildfires – or at least enough to earn him a Forest Resource Technician diploma.
He repeated that work/school regimen every year for the next four, and by 2000 was the crew’s team leader, then ranger, for the office in Rocky Mountain House.
The job kept his summers action-filled, including a trip north to help knock down the Mitsue Fire — east of Slave Lake in 1998, and the House Creek fire (near Swan Hills) a year later.
A wildfire technician’s job took him to a permanent posting in High Level in 2003, and back to Rocky Mountain House two years later.
A short time later he met his future wife at a wedding in Prince George. And before long he was applying for a job in Slave Lake so he could be close to his Athabasca sweetheart. He landed a wildfire tech job in 2005, and was in precisely the right place two years later when Orich announced he was stepping down.
Green had filled in for the WOO when he was away, so decided to apply for the job permanently. Long story made short, he took over the job in May of this year, with Orich as his mentor. Two months later he was on his own.
From his new position he oversees wildfire suppression in this forest. And when a big blaze erupts -- here or elsewhere in the province -- he’s part of a five-person team that co-ordinates and orchestrates the fire’s ‘death’.
“It’s been good – lots of fun,” Green says of the new job.
“It’s a well-oiled piece of machinery that everybody here set up. There’s a lot of good, experienced staff here.”
Green credits his knack for being “in the right place, and lots of good opportunities when I was ready to move” for his quick trip to the top of fire suppression ladder.
It’s a job without parallel, made even better because it’s a team that works quickly and efficiently “and brings everyone home safe.”
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