With state employees being cut, it is a major loss to the state as well as to their families and friends. We absolutely need every experienced firefighter we have under current conditions.

Hamilton County, like a lot of Northern Florida, is poor and most of its fire departments are volunteers with minimum resources. These were veteran state forest rangers, so it is a major loss in a force that only has 2000 people for the entire state.

Microclimate is the wildcard that can make this work so dangerous. You can spend years training and working fires and learning/implementing the 10 Standard Firefighting Orders and 18 Watchout Situations, and things can still go so horribly wrong, even on a small fire…