Blake Toth: Insights and Lessons on International Wildland Fire – from Switzerland to South Africa

[This article originally appeared in the 2024 Fall Issue of Two More Chains.]

By Matthew Carlson

Assistant Writer-Editor (Detailed)

Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center

Blake Toth got into wildland fire after serving as a Huey crew chief in the United States Marine Corps for five years, from 2012 to 2017. While serving in the Marines, his helicopter crew contributed to the first time a Bell UH-1Y helicopter was used in wildland firefighting operations—doing bucket work—on the 2014 Basilone Complex fires in California.

After the Marines, Blake’s first fire season was with the Southwest Conservation Corps’ Veterans Fire Corps.

From there, Blake served multiple seasons with U.S. Forest Service helitack and rappel crews. Simultaneously, Blake has managed his non-profit Veterans In Fire (VIF) organization that assists veterans transitioning into the wildland fire service through Veterans’ Recruitment Appointment (an excepted authority that allows agencies to appoint eligible veterans without competition).

VIF partnered with the Swiss 22nd Wild Life Foundation, a non-profit organization that engages mainly in volunteer work in bushfire fighting, to form the 22nd Paws Interagency Hotshot Crew (IHC) to address the need for international wildland fire training and response. Blake has gone on to serve in Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and South Africa with the 22nd Paws IHC.

Due to his vast international experience, we realized Blake would have important input for this Two More Chains issue. We contacted Blake and he was happy to share his insights and lessons with us in response to the following questions:

Describe your international fire experience. Where have you gone and in what capacity? 

My first introduction to international fire started in Sardinia, Italy in 2022. It was a combined effort between Veterans In Fire and a Swiss hotshot crew which is an offshoot of its parent organization, the 22nd Wild Life Foundation. This was an international fire exchange aiming to bring together firefighters to speak about wildland fire and tactics in different parts of the world. 

I then did some training work in Switzerland and Germany with the 22nd Wild Life Foundation. This was an instructional period for interested firefighters who were mostly on structure fire departments in Switzerland. We brought them out to the woods and introduced them to the concept of wildland fire, chainsaws, bucking, and felling. 

Over the last 14 months, I’ve spent around six months in South Africa, fighting wildland fires from Cape Town to the Northern Territories and the borders of Botswana. We started off with just me and the founder of the 22nd Wild Life Foundation going to South Africa for anti-poaching efforts. We brought our fire gear with us because as part of anti-poaching, the poachers will start bushfires to drive the animals in the direction they want, or to create a distraction from the anti-poaching units. While we were there, we were experiencing these bushfires. We then brought other non-profits/NGOs. 

This past August through September we cycled more than 20 crew members through South Africa during a 21-day period and had 33 initial attacks in 21 days operating out of Toyota Hilux rental vehicles.

Could you describe some key similarities and differences in these international locations compared to fire operations in the U.S.? 

One of the best examples that I can give you of firefighting tactics that are the same and most commonly utilized between the U.S. and everywhere in the world, is the suppression method of starting a backfire. It’s utilized around the world in all the different places that I’ve been—however, depending on where you are, these firing operations can be totally different.

If I’m in the U.S., there’s a burn boss, there’s a firing boss, there’s specific crew members that are holding drip torches, which are, you know, approved DOT containers to hold fuel and prevent flashback into the container. But wherever you are, you’re conducting a back burn to suppress the fire. 

During my first experience conducting a back burn in South Africa, the local farmer—whose farm was burning down—told us we needed to do a back burn. Based on the winds and the humidity's, because we think more tactically, we told the farmer that we were not comfortable starting a back burn. This is when you get into the complications of politics. You have different politics fighting fire in California than you do in Idaho. You have different political interests at play if you’re fighting fire in Los Angeles County or if you’re fighting fire in Winnemucca, Nevada. 

So, in America, if we’re going to conduct a back burn, there’s this chain of command that has to give approval to start that back burn operation. Or at least within that hotshot crew or whoever is making those decisions, who’s determining that this is the proper tactic.

Anyway, this particular incident in South Africa that day was a 100-acre wildfire. This local farmer tells us: “We have to do a back burn.” But, when we told him: “No, we’re not comfortable due to the winds and the humidity's.” His response was: “Well, I don't have all day. So, we got to do a back burn.” 

Again, I said: “No, you will not start a back burn. My crew is in the direction of the wind. You’re not going to start a fire that’s going to go downwind toward my crew.”

Next, I walked down to my crew and made sure that they’re all doing well holding the line. Our skid unit, which is like a Type-6 Engine, is suppressing the fire as it approaches the containment line that we had set. Then I start seeing flames rage up from behind my back. I turn around and run to the other containment line, which was a dirt road. 

The farmer had taken a one-liter Coca-Cola bottle, filled it with fuel, poked a hole in the top and was using that as his drip torch. He was burning off the field off the road in the direction of my crew. 

That was a wake-up call for me in suppressing fire in South Africa. From our perspective, not all people seem to care about “Safety.” They just care about protecting their land. They don’t take into consideration the humidity, wind, rate of spread, and things like that when they’re conducting back burning operations. That’s not to say that there’s no organization. The organizations that we work with, such as the Apies River Fire Protection Agency, they put out a daily weather report that we use in our daily briefings.

Some other differences include the fact that some of the most common tools in South Africa are some of the least common tools in America. In America, depending on where you work in this country, you may use flappers and leaf blowers—mostly on the East Coast during prescribed fire and suppression efforts.

In places like South Africa, their primary tools are blowers and flappers. You will not find a pulaski anywhere in South Africa. 

In America, we sort of view the pulaski as the wildland fire tool. In South Africa, the most common firefighting tool becomes whatever “tool” that you have access to. That could be a blower; it could be a flapper. I’ve even seen people pick up tree branches to use to smother the fire.

That’s another significant difference between fighting fire in northern South Africa and America. In America, we put line around the entire fire. In South Africa, there’s no reason to dig a line around the entire fire. They simply put the fire out and move on. They don’t think about how it could potentially restart because the terrain is so different and there’s no duff layer. As soon as you smother the fire—which is why tools like flappers are so efficient in South Africa—the fire is out and it can’t go anywhere. It’s completely extinguished at that point.

Any advice for those taking an assignment to these international locations? 

Take your experiences and your knowledge of fire with you. But do not allow your knowledge and experience to determine your thoughts and perspectives on their tactics and their approach to fighting fire.

One of the biggest lessons that I learned fighting fire internationally is that there’s different ways to fight fire—and that’s totally okay. Our tactics may work and have been successfully proven here over decades, if not hundreds of years. But we need to remember that our tactics and our methods have been curated based off experiences unique to this country. 

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Likewise, the approach to fighting fire somewhere like Europe or Africa is also based on their local knowledge of the terrain and environment. I remember on one of my first fires in South Africa, myself and the founder of the 22nd Wild Life Foundation showed up in our greens and yellows with our Mystery ranch backpacks and our pulaskis ready to dig fireline. We ended up spending about two hours digging fireline that was totally not needed. Our work had been a waste of time. Our efforts would have been better utilized using flappers or just holding the line.

Therefore, I think one of the biggest lessons is that if you’re going to go take an international fire assignment, go into it with an open mind. While you might be a professional U.S. wildland firefighter, these people who live in their country with their wildland fire suppression tactics are based on generational experience. Your tactics are based on professional experience.

That’s the way it is in South Africa. For the most part, the residents in South Africa are not “professional” firefighters. They are farmers and landowners who have to fight fire to protect their land and their homes.

How would you compare risk tolerance or safety culture among the different countries you have worked in?

I would say it varies. It’s significantly different between Europe and South Africa. I would also say that it is significantly different between the metropolitan areas of South Africa and its rural areas. The rural areas of South Africa have no culture of safety. They just have a culture of putting the fire out. Within the metropolitan areas of South Africa, they have regular fire tactics, dispatch, command and control. 

Whereas in rural South Africa, I’ve seen a woman fighting fires with a baby on her back, slapping fire out with a tree branch. I’ve seen a six-year-old standing in their yard, extinguishing fire with a garden hose while barefoot. 

If you’re fighting fire in rural South Africa, there’s no safety culture. There’s just tactics. So people will fight fire in shorts and flip-flops. People will also fight fire in full-on fire gear. It really just depends on what they have access to. Depending on the culture, if they have access to professional services and safety equipment, it’s utilized. If they do not, it just does not exist. 

Is there any gear you’ve run into that makes sense for us to be using here?

I think in America we have this culture where bigger and more complex is better. In places like South Africa, they’re fighting fire with way less complex vehicles and achieving the same result. The result is fire suppression.

So, what’s going to achieve that goal most efficiently? Do you need a Type 4 Engine, or do you just need somebody to go out into the fire with a bladder bag—also very common in South Africa—and just go put water on the flames? I would say that there are way more cultural similarities than differences in international wildland firefighting. I think you can take an American firefighter and put them anywhere in the world to fight wildland fire–and they will provide value to the unit or agency they’re supporting. 

However, I think the units and the agencies in South Africa or Europe that are fighting wildfires there have their own equipment and tactics for different situations that makes the most sense for their particular type of terrain, vegetation, and environment.

Is there anything else that you would like to share with us?

Everyone I work with is a volunteer. They are military members, structure firefighters, nurses, or police officers in other countries who are committed to a life of service.

For the sake of service to others, they have to come up with their own resources to fight wildfires on other continents.

They use their own personal finances and their annual time off year after year to participate in these assignments, many of them spending two to three thousand dollars to work without pay.