Forester Steve Paes fights wildfires around nation, manages 15,000 acres of Missouri state land

Steve Paes has seen much of this country. And usually when he goes to a place, it's hot. Scorching hot. More accurately, flaming hot.

Paes is a forester for the Missouri Department of Conservation in Doniphan, Missouri, and among his duties are fighting wildfires in that area as well as around the nation.

The 59-year-old Paes is a 32-year veteran of wildfires, having faced his first in 1988 while working for the Arkansas Forestry Commission and his most recent in Idaho and Montana over a 14-day stretch in September. He's fought more than 700 fires, big and small, in between.

He's battled wild blazes in several eastern states, including Texas, Oklahoma and most of the western United States.

"It's easier to name the states I haven't been in," says Paes about his adventures west of the Rocky Mountains.

Cutline-Body Copy:Steve Paes is a 32-year veteran of fighting wildfires. He became a fire behavior anaylist in 2013. He is shown here at the Sun Valley Ski Resort in Idaho, where he says snow-making machines were used to spray water to extinguish a wildfire.Cutline-File Credit:Submitted photo

For the record, he's not fought blazes in New Mexico, Utah or Nevada.

He says fire fighting only is about 5 to 10 percent of his forestry job. "It's obviously a high-priority thing, but not something that happens all the time," says Paes, who fights wildfires in Ripley and Oregon counties as part of his job duties.

"If you are an employee of the Department of Conservation, you have the option of becoming qualified in participating in our out-of-state fire program," Paes says.

He does, and it's become his specialty, with Paes becoming well-established in the wildfire ranks. He has ascended to be one of about 150 wildfire behavior analysts in the nation since starting as a member of a 20-man traveling crew from Missouri. He may be the foremost authority on wildfire behavior in Missouri.

About once a year, sometimes twice, depending on wildfire needs, Paes will travel out of state to serve as the analysts for a wildfire management team that makes tactical decisions, deciding where to draw fire lines and coordinating the efforts of its divisions.

"My job is to sort of predict what the fire is going to do the next day, and sometimes in the more longer term, in the next three or four days," Paes says.

He also communicates with the people on the fire line about the game plan over the coming days.

"I coordinate with them to make sure what they're planning to do and what we think the fire is going to do don't contradict each other," Paes says.

He bases his predictions using variables of terrain, fuel potential for the fire and weather conditions. And the variables can be wide, with the behavior of a blaze affected by terrain flat to mountainous, material ranging from grassland to brush to densely forested dead trees, and atmospheric conditions calm and humid to dry and windy.

He's assigned his own personal meteorologist to assess the weather.

"It gets complicated," Paes said. "With a big fire, it's not just on top of the mountain. It's in the valley, in the ridge. It's in a lot of different places, and they all have different potential."

He's seen fires burn beyond predicted patterns, behaving like a predator on the prowl.

"I've been on fires where they move up a valley, over a mountain, and you're not really sure where they're at," Paes says. "And that makes it hard to predict what they're going to do tomorrow because you don't know where they ended up."

He may go to bed with questions on fire whereabouts, but awake with new information, thanks to infrared images taken from planes throughout the night.

"It makes it challenging and sometimes stressful," Paes says of predictions that can affect both safety and containment.

But it's a position he's had his eyes on since 1996, when he first attended fire behavior classes while a member of a 20-man crew.

"I took one of the more complicated ones and said, 'I like this.'" He also took into account the physical demands of fighting fires on the line.

"You work 10 to 15 hours digging fire lines. ... You get to a certain age and you realize 'I've got to find something else to do,'" Paes says.

He strived toward the goal of fire behavior analyst one rung at a time, obtaining the necessary training and positions needed along the way -- crew boss, strike-team leader (typically two crews) and division supervisor.

The division supervisor is the highest ranking person on the fire line, in charge of 60 to 100 men along with machinery and equipment. That person also is in charge of executing the strategy established by the management team at the base camp.

With division supervisor attained, he attended fire behavior school, a two-week program offered once every two years in Tucson, Arizona, to become an analyst trainee -- a trainee protocol adhered to at all levels -- in 2009. He then served on three wildfire management teams while being observed by a fully qualified behavior analyst, who checks off duties performed in a task book. He ultimately was signed off for the position in 2013.

Paes said fighting the huge wildfires, the largest he's gone against is 200 square miles (120,000 acres), has the same basic approach employed as in the smaller state fires in Missouri, typically 10 to 20 acres -- the largest he's faced in Missouri is 500 acres -- which start with assessment (identifying structures, if any, and notifying dispatchers of resources needed), crews clearing a perimeter around the blaze (with a bulldozer), then sparking a fire to burn from the control edge into the blaze. He says he fights 10 to 20 wildfires in Missouri each year, most started by humans, whether through carelessness, arson or controlled burns that get out of control. He says the peak season occurs in the winter months of January, February and March, where a combination of low humidity, high winds and sunshine through bare trees dry the ground and make for ripe conditions.

He said many of the big western wildfires are sparked by lightning strikes in non-rain events in mountainous areas, although humans cause some.

He said safety is a paramount issue at all levels of command, with a "span of control" of no more than four or five people at all levels of supervision, all the way down to the squads that make up a crew. It allows for close tabs on the whereabouts of personnel.

Everyone has duties to look out for one another, and Paes said establishing escape zones and escape routes are the first consideration when taking on a wildfire.

He said he's had to seek refuge twice, both times in Montana.

"Both times I went to safety zones, neither case did I see what was coming," Paes says. "Someone somewhere else, a lookout, saw it and radioed."

Every firefighter carries a fire shelter, which serves as a heat shield if they become trapped. It's a worst-case-scenario device Paes has never had to use. "That's quite an event if you've got to deploy," Paes says. "Quite a few things have to go wrong."

The high drama is just a small part of his bigger job in forestry, for which he received a degree from Louisiana State University in the 1970s.

"I can't explain why I wanted to be a forester, I just remember for a long time that's just what I wanted to do."

He started in Ripley County in 1990, and part of his job is educational. He teaches some refresher classes for firefighter personnel so they can maintain qualifications, and he'll visit schools on occasion to give presentations on fire safety and forestry topics.

But his main job is managing 15,000 acres of state land, wildlife areas and natural areas in Ripley and Oregon counties. He'll also assist private landowners in forest management.

"That's a big service the Missouri Department of Conservation provides," Paes says. "Any landowner can ask us to visit their land and evaluate it and give advice on how to manage it.

He also keeps an eye on drought conditions and daily weather to inform his supervisor about fire potential and the possible need to ban campfires on state lands.

"You got very dry fuels and high winds, bad things happen," Paes says.

That he knows.