Vancouver Fire Battalion Chief Kevin Griffee never knows when he might get a 2 a.m. phone call with orders to get on a plane in two hours and help manage the complex emergency response at a wildfire, landslide, flood or hurricane. And he never knows how long he’ll be gone.
But that comes with the territory of being operations section chief on Washington Incident Management Team 3, a job he’s held for 13 years.
“I like doing what I do, and I think it’s the right thing to do,” said Griffee, 52, during a June 23 phone call from a fire 2,500 miles away in Kenai, Alaska. Since the blaze broke out June 15, more than 7,000 acres and 13 structures have burned in Kenai.
As operations section chief, Griffee likens himself to a chess player. He’s responsible for coordinating all movements of troops, bulldozers, fire engines, helicopters and hotshot crews to catch the fire in certain locations.
This is the third June in a row he’s gone to Alaska for fires, working 12- to 16-hour days, said Griffee, who estimates he’s one of about only 15 people statewide qualified to do incident management at his level. (There are five incident management teams in Washington.)
He and his incident management peers aren’t standing around, waiting for a call, either — everyone in his position has a full-time job, he pointed out. And when he’s called away to help other communities with their disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina or the landslide in Oso, someone must perform his battalion chief duties.
“We don’t get to plan when the next fire is,” he said. “I can’t schedule the hours so there’s no overtime.”
He’s had to drop everything in the middle of a family vacation to head out for incident management calls that take him away for weeks at a time. Stationed in the woods or the desert, he sleeps on the ground in a tent, hitting the sack at 10 p.m. and getting up at 5 a.m.
“We all like what we do or we wouldn’t be doing it,” he said. “If you’re a fan of creature comforts, this is not for you.”
And for sacrificing personal time and working long hours under grueling conditions, yes, he’s financially compensated, Griffee said.
