Local firefighter took on challenge in Montana

Casey Donahoe volunteered to battle wildfires in the state.

Casey Donahoe is shown in eastern Montana, where he fought wildfires last month. Submitted

A lifetime member of Rainbow Volunteer Fire Company in White Oak spent one of the hottest months of the year battling wildfires in Montana.

Casey Donahoe, 39, of McKeesport and a White Oak native, has spent 21 years with the White Oak department. One day, when a few members of the department were called to a wildfire in Ohiopyle in 2021, he decided to tag along.

“Well, they had four guys here, and they needed five,” Donahoe said. “I was like ‘Can I go?’ And they were like yes you can. In Pennsylvania, if you don’t have the training or anything, you can go as long as the other guys have it.”

Donahoe said they began putting out the fire at 8 p.m. and didn’t get home until 6 a.m. the next day.

“I loved it. I woke my wife up and I said ‘I like this. I really like this.’ And then I furthered it and went to S130 field day,” Donahoe said. “They basically up in Patton, Pa., lit a hillside on fire and we put it out. It’s pretty crazy that they did that, but that’s what they did, and then from there I took an EMT extraction class, which I am not an EMT.”

White Oak’s chief Brandon Schmidt, along with deputy chief Rick Whirl, were the ones who inspired Donahoe to pursue further training through out-of-state firefighting.

“Everybody is looking for some sort of new training, something that you can do to fit in with your area,” Whirl said. “I brought a different opportunity to his department, the chance of how to handle wildfires.”

Donahoe said Schmidt is a paid firefighter in McKeesport and works part time in Peters Township as well as the reserves as a firefighter. Schmidt wanted to take some classes during the pandemic and pursued the DCNR training, but has yet to go out west.

However, Donahoe and Schmidt are the only ones from the department qualified to do out-of-state firefighting, and there are some members that are trained at the local and state level.

Donahoe is the first person from the department to fight fires out West, according to Schmidt, who said his self-motivation to do this training shows his desire to help people, and it takes a “special kind of person to be able to do that.”

“It was something I was doing and he said ‘It sounds pretty fun. I’ll do it too.’ He took it and ran with it, and he’s done more with it than I have,” Schmidt said. “I’ve known Casey pretty much my entire life. We’ve been friends for a long time.”

Donahoe, Schmidt and a couple of other members were then taken for more training two and a half miles into the woods, where they had to take someone on a gurney.

“So that was fun, and then after that I had to go away to basic training, and that was out near Shippensburg University,” Donahoe said. “I was there from Friday through Sunday. It’s pretty close to boot camp.”

Donahoe said the team he was with goes everywhere together, and they learned communication and staying together, which was “really big.” They stayed in a gymnasium the first night and in the field the next night, training throughout their time there.

“We had to make a gurney out of trees and paratrooper chords because you don’t have a gurney out in the middle of the woods. We made one and it was about a mile we had to walk with it on it, and that was the test. They weren’t allowed to fall through.”

Then, Donahoe said he had to pass a “tricky” test – the Pack Test – which allowed him to be eligible to fight fires out West. It includes a 45-pound backpack and speed walking for three miles for 45 minutes.

“I had really no training, and some of the guys down here had basic training to go on wildland fires in Pennsylvania,” Donahoe said. “You don’t have to do the backpack test for Pennsylvania, but to go to other states. The test is basically saying you are in shape to go.”

The National Interagency Fire Center statistics show that as of Aug. 15, 2024, 29,917 fires this year have burned more than 5.2 million acres. The year-to-date number of wildfires is below the annual average of 35,691, but the yearly acres burned is above the 10-year YTD average of 3.8 million acres. Fire season is from early June/ July to October/November.

Pennsylvania sends crews of 20 people to western states to assist with battling wildfires, and 2023 marked the 50th year that the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources participated in a cooperative agreement with the federal government to assist with out-of-state wildfires.

“It’s a good program that Pennsylvania offers to support what’s going on out west,” Schmidt said. “The task that they have in front of them when they are doing all that stuff it’s crazy that they are able to get done what they get done and put those fires out. They’re up against some pretty tough odds out there, so its nice that the crews from this state send some people to help them out.”

Pennsylvania has 14 districts of DCNR firefighters, and there is a rotation for those who go help with fires in the western part of the United States. Some districts have around 100 firefighters who are qualified, and some, like Allegheny, only have Donahoe.

The Pittsburgh area is considered under District 4 and the districts have rotations of when they go to help other states. The rotation came around a second time this year — the first being around July 29 when Donahoe left to go to Montana. The second crew left Thursday, according to Donahoe, who didn’t go with this rotation due to his day job.

“The one time it came around, I went out,” Donahoe said. “It actually came back around and three guys that I went with, they went yesterday, and two of them do work for the DCNR, so it’s a little easier for them to take off. The other guy has flexibility to go.

“I was the only one that went out from Allegheny County on that cycle. I don’t think anyone else has gone out this year from Allegheny County. We don’t have many of them in Allegheny County. There are only five of us (in the district) that are qualified to go out there.”

Firefighters are trained and qualified under national wildland standards to function either as a member of an organized incident management team or as a member of a wildland crew, which Donahoe was a part of.

Although Montana and Oregon were the first two states to receive Pennsylvania assistance, California and other states gained assistance as well. DCNR firefighters also handle Pennsylvania wildfires.

“Pennsylvania has been doing it for a long time; they still send crews out there,” Donahoe said. “We live close to the city, so we don’t really know about wildland fires. There’s wildland fires in Pennsylvania all the time. You just don’t hear about it because a lot of news places don’t go out to those places.”

For three weeks until around Aug. 18, Donahoe along with the 19 other firefighters on his crew got their orders, went to their first fire — Nelson’s Draw — and were briefed by a crew that was already there. He was handling that 850acre wildfire for three days.

“On the fire is a whole different ball game,” Donahoe said. “We actually got there and slept while the fire was going because you can’t really do much at night. Fire actually dies down at night, and then it resparks again in the morning. It’s like the desert. It’s 104 degrees during the day and it will drop down to 52 at night. It’s weird.”

Thunderstorms and lightning are what caused the two fires Donahoe worked on during his time in eastern Montana, and they would only come out at night.

Donahoe said the second fire they went to — named the Steward Fire, which was originally 40 acres — was next to another fire, named the Shirley Fire, that had thousands of acres that were on fire.

“So when we got there, we had to go up a mountain and clear a path. We cut trees down, brush, everything to get it out of the way. Once we got up to the top, I kept on noticing that the other fire was getting closer. It actually merged.”

Both wildfires came together as one and were named the Shirley Fire, and Donahoe said they were there for four days.

Donahoe said the crew didn’t have a day off the whole three weeks he was in Montana, and the crew stayed in “spike camps,” which is where the crew picked a field to go to near the fire to set up tents.

“We had to do other stuff. We had to go to a forest and cut stuff down,” Donahoe said. “We did project work out there that is like preventive fire stuff, so we go to a random forest and deal with trees five feet up and we cut little trees down so if they do get struck by lightning in that area, it doesn’t catch everything on fire. That’s what we did in the remaining time.”

Volunteers on both ends of firefighting, whether it be from local departments or wildfires, are hard to come by, according to Donahoe, who said they are low in numbers in all areas.

He hopes to break the stigma, even though fighting wildfires is a “different experience” than fighting house fires. Wildland firefighters would have to “be able to leave everything.”

Donahoe said he was told by many firefighters at work and at other places that he was “nuts” for joining such a dangerous job because a firefighter fighting a house fire is not the same as fighting wildfires, which are “a lot faster.”

“I just liked it. You have to work and there’s no time for lazy people, so lazy people don’t really go,” he said. “Everyone out there is in the same boat. That’s how close you become. Just the environment of it. I always liked doing things other people don’t like to do. There might be some jobs that are gross, disgusting. I don’t mind doing them. Things like that no one wants to do.

“It all depends on what the temperature is, the wind pattern. You have to watch out for all that stuff because that fire can change real quick, and it might be too late. I like working under pressure.”