‘They Can Make a Big Difference Out There’ : Migrant Farm Workers--Heroes on Fire Lines

In the onion fields of the Snake River Valley, the farm workers usually toil in a grueling, minimum-wage cycle. Plant in spring, pick in fall, pack in winter.

But in summer, they follow a special season. They become migrant firefighters, trained by the Bureau of Land Management and deployed across the West, from the deserts of Arizona to the tall timber of Alaska.

They are known on the fire lines as the “SRVs,” for the Snake River Valley, and for a season--the fire season--the migrants are heroes.

“They can make a big difference out there,” said Dave Wells, the Oregon Forestry Department liaison officer with the 140 SRVs working two major forest fires in southern Oregon.

The SRVs are just one colorful part of an intricate firefighting network that links various agencies across the country.

The estimated 1,200 firefighters deployed in the Rogue River valley near Medford include crews of migrants, prison inmates, National Guardsmen, loggers and a group of Job Corps youths. Cardboard signs among the sleeping bags at the fire camp tell how far they’ve come--Kentucky, Minnesota, Tennessee, Florida, Virginia, Georgia, Michigan.

“The interagency cooperation out here is remarkable,” said Lou Gugliotta, an information officer at the fire camp.

“They come from the National Park Service, the Forest Service, state agencies, the BLM, and local city and rural fire stations,” Gugliotta said.

Many of them work in such areas as recreation, wildlife management or reforestation when it is not fire season.

Out-of-State Crews

The out-of-state crews--teams of 20 firefighters each--are dispatched by the Boise Interagency Fire Center in Idaho, the nation’s firefighting nerve center.

Local firefighters usually serve as team leaders for crews unfamiliar with the type of wildfires native to the West.

In Oregon, the rugged terrain and unpredictable canyon winds provide new challenges for out-of-state crews, Gugliotta said.

“Where we’re from, it’s all flat,” said Joe Drozdowski, a forestry technician with the Huron-Manistee National Forest crew from Michigan.

City firefighters are kept on hand to protect houses and other buildings threatened by wildfires.

“Most city and rural firefighters in Oregon are trained in wildfires, but wildfire people are not trained in structures,” Gugliotta said, noting that more chemicals are involved in structural fires, along with a higher risk of explosion and toxic fumes.

‘Know What They’re Doing’

“Everybody here is professional and well-educated,” Gugliotta said. “They really know what they’re doing.

“In Oregon, there’s so much money in the woods. One tree--you’re looking at $3,000-$4,000.

“It’s like in Bel-Air, they’re not going to send in a bunch of rookies,” Gugliotta said. “People get more emotional here over losing a Douglas fir than over something they can replace. People like to protect the woods here, it’s how they make their living.”

Protecting the woods from fire is a more lucrative living for some than others.

The migrants earn $7-$9 an hour, but no overtime or hazard pay. Working the onion fields, they say they average about $100 a week. The 84 inmates from the South Fork Honor Camp in Oregon are earning $3 and two packs of cigarettes a day on the Rogue River fires.

“They’re minimum-custody people or people near the end of their terms,” supervisor Marvin Roberts said.

“This provides them the opportunity to get back into the system and have the fulfillment of feeling like they’re putting something back,” he said.

20-Year History

The migrant firefighting team goes back more than 20 years, when the Bureau of Land Management in Vale, Ore., drew on the ready labor pool during the summer slack in farm work.

“Most of them are Hispanic but we have some Anglos on the crews, too,” said Bill Keil, spokesman for the Oregon and Washington region of the BLM.

“They’re really good firefighters,” he said. “They’re used to hard labor, and firefighting is real work. And they have a pretty good esprit de corps. “

The SRVs at the Rogue River fires arrived Monday after a 12-hour ride on a rickety, gray school bus. They were sent immediately to the fire line.

“That first day, we were going for 29 hours straight,” said Cruz Martinez, 31, who has spent 13 summers as an SRV with his father and two brothers.

“We’re laborers and a lot of the SRVs get into this thinking only of the money,” Martinez said. “They fail to see that it’s real hazardous work, especially at night. There are pits on the forest floors four and five feet deep, filled with hot coals. You’ve got snakes, falling rocks, snags, scorpions. . . .

“You have to be alert all the time, thinking about escape routes,” he said. “It’s mental and physical work.”

Rousted at 4:30

On Friday, the SRVs were rousted from their sleeping bags at 4:30 a.m. They stood shivering in the chow line, wolfed down their breakfasts and boarded the old gray bus. Many had come down off the fire line at midnight; they dozed on the bus as the sun rose a red globe in the ashen sky. Others joked and chattered.

“Life-threatening? You bet, just ask us about the sandwiches they fed us for lunch yesterday,” one SRV cracked.

“They used to take us out in farm trucks,” remembered Victor Llanas, a 23-year SRV veteran.

“I was 14 years old when I started. I just lied about my age and in those days, it didn’t matter,” he said.

“I’d been fighting with my mother. I didn’t want to work in the fields, and the money fighting fires was better. She let me,” Llanas said. “I was going to give it up this year. Maybe next year.”

There has been only one fatality in the history of the SRVs, who spend 32 hours in training before working a fire.

Word-of-Mouth

The Snake River Valley firefighters are recruited through word-of-mouth, and crews are often filled with friends and relatives.

“Their real value is not so much direct attack on a fire, but going back day after day for mop-up,” said Jerry Erstrom, a BLM spokesman at Vale.

“They do the digging, some of the back-fires and the slow, methodical work--the nuts-and-bolts, dirty part of firefighting that doesn’t get much glory,” Erstrom said.

Alicia Gallegos and her husband, Mark, leave their three children with relatives to work the fires.

“It’s scary the first time you see the flames,” Gallegos said, “but after a while, you get used to it.”