TENSED - Regina Mundell is hot on the trail of wildfire season.

The Sandpoint woman is retired from the Army after 23 years, but, at 47, she's a student once again.

Mundell is among the 85 people who are training to fight wildfires this summer at this week's firefighting guard school at Camp Sanders.

"I want to experience the talk and experience the walk," she said while taking a break from digging a line at a practice burn at the school on Thursday.

Mundell, visibly tired from walking and sometimes running through the timber and packing about 45 pounds of gear during the exercises, said the training was more rigorous than she expected - even with her military background.

"It's intense," she said. "And you have to absorb a lot of information. You learn a lot here. You never become complacent around fires."

The training will be put into real action this summer - guaranteed, said Josh Harvey, who is serving as incident commander at the school.

Harvey said all of the students will be deployed to a wildfire soon.

"When they go home, there will be an order waiting for the majority of them," he said. "This is trial by fire. You get out of class and head to a fire. The Southwest is blowing up right now."

That's why the school simulates a real wildfire situation as much as possible - from eating camp chow to sleeping in tents to hiking into a forest to battle flames. On the way to fires, they encountered safety "hazards" such as a meth lab operation and dead trees.

The school is a cooperative effort between the Coeur d'Alene and Nez Perce tribes, Idaho Department of Lands, the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service.

Harvey said a few students at each school realize fighting wildfires isn't for them and bow out.

And, if they sense turning back during 80-degree weather in North Idaho in June, it would be a given at 100 degrees in New Mexico and even longer working days, Harvey said.

"We don't try to weed people out, per se," Harvey said. "But we want there to be a realization process."

Students must pass a physical test, among other requirements, by responding 3 miles in rough terrain and full gear under 45 minutes to become "red-card certified." While most students pass that test, it's the long hours that tends to be the deal-breaker, Harvey said.

In their evaluations, six students said they were having second thoughts due to the nine- to 10-hour days at the school, and Harvey said the hours at actual fires can be longer.

However, most students move forward with fighting fires for the satisfaction of making a difference in a potential catastrophic situation, being part of a team or the adrenaline-rush experience.

Steve McCombs, supply unit leader at the school who works for the Idaho Department of Lands, has been fighting wildfires for 12 years and he has crossed paths with someone he knows at every incident.

"I've been everywhere from Alaska to Florida," he said.

Wildland firefighters don't risk their lives for the money. Many make only $12 an hour starting out, depending on the agency and/or position.

"Where you can start to make the money is working 16 hours a day, seven days a week," he said, referring to overtime.

For Bryce Young, a University of Montana student who is stationed in Bonners Ferry for the IDL this summer, it's a seasonal job to earn money during college.

"I really like working outdoors and with a team," he said, soaking in sweat after emerging from a plastic fire shelter. "What we're doing is meaningful for people and the environment."

Throughout the exercises, students were constantly communicating to each other, whether warning the next firefighter about a hazard in their path or whether the group was getting too bunched up while digging a line around the fire. When a firefighter was separated too far from the others, he heard about it in the name of safety.

Shoshana Cooper, who is the public information officer for the school and works for the Forest Service in Coeur d'Alene, has a psychology degree but that isn't the direction she wants to go with her career. So she plans to attend a different wildland firefighter school this month because it will help her step toward being a public affairs officer.

Like Mundell, who is an administrative assistant at the Forest Service's Sandpoint District, many of the students at the school are spreading wings with their jobs at various agencies.

"I found (fighting wildfires) interesting, and I want to learn more," she said. "I enjoy the fire culture, the teamwork and doing what I'm paid by the public to do."

Wildfire season heating up

Don't let that wet spring deceive you, says Josh Harvey.

That situation can lead to an even more devastating wildfire season, the incident commander at the firefighting training school in Tensed said.

"It's going to get drier, so the threat is not going to go away," Harvey said. "A nice, wet spring makes for good fuel loads."

Harvey said wildfires in New Mexico and California are an early indication that firefighters are in for a long wildfire season this year.

In North Idaho, the region had a less-than-normal snowpack for the winter, so that's another sign of danger ahead, he said.

Harvey said if June is a dry month, that can make for a long July and August in the forests and grasslands.