By Mason Kelley
GoHuskies.com
Danielle Olson wasn’t a student this summer. The standout rower wasn’t an athlete. For 27 days, the senior was simply “The Machine.”
A member of the National Guard, Olson was called into service to fight the wildfires in Eastern Washington this summer. She worked so hard, she earned the nickname for her tireless efforts throughout each 16-hour day working on fires in Chelan and Kettle Falls.
No matter what was required during her time facing the fires, Olson worked to accomplish each task as if she were training for a race with her teammates at Washington.
“I think that comes from rowing,” she said. “You’re going 30K a day. You never stop. You always work hard. Every stroke has to be the same as the one before, just as fresh, just as strong, just as powerful.
Instead of focusing on a stroke or her team, Olson took her rowing mentality and applied it to digging hotline trenches to help contain the blaze or searching for hot spots once the fire subsided.
She told herself, “I need to work as hard as I can. I don’t want to burn out. I’m really fit. I need to show all the skills I have while I’m here and represent.”
Olson’s journey east started while inspecting vehicles as part of her National Guard responsibilities. She was working on trucks at Boeing Field, doing routine maintenance, checking the tires, oil, washer fluid and ensuring there was no physical damage to the vehicles.
At the time, the wildfires were getting worse. Members of the National Guard were asked to volunteer. Olson was one of 12 people who offered to help. But there weren’t enough volunteers to mobilize a unit.
“We knew it was really bad getting worse,” Olson said.
Then President Barack Obama declared a state of emergency. Instead of looking for more volunteers, her National Guard unit was deployed.
“I was one of the people who had to call and tell people, ‘Hey, we’re getting deployed. You have to come. You don’t have a choice,’” she said.
Olson said there were a lot of “uncomfortable conversations” as she notified her unit they were heading east. On the day they were deployed, Olson’s unit left at 5 a.m. After medical in-processing, Olson drove a Light Medium Tactical Vehicle (LMTV) loaded with equipment to Yakima.
Before Olson could start fighting fires, she had to go through training.
“It was a big learning curve to understand fire behavior,” she said. “All of the things I learned were so interesting. You have to be quick on your feet, because if you’re not, you’re going to get caught in flame and that’s really bad.”
After seven days of preparation, Olson found herself on the frontline of the fire.
“You get pretty close to the flame line,” she said.
Working with a crew of 20 people, Olson helped dig trenches that were three feet wide and two feet deep.
“It’s just soil so the fire can’t jump across,” she said.
Working to dig five miles of trench every three days, the crew worked to keep the fire from “jumping over your line.”
“You have to keep an eye on that,” Olson said. “If that happens, you have to move your line around or go put that fire out separately.”
As one of the more fit members of her crew, Olson took it upon herself to motivate the group.
“OK, guys we’re going,” she would tell the members of the group. “We only have 100 meters left of this line and then we get to go home. Get excited.”
Working with a variety of people from different backgrounds, Olson learned there is no one way to get people going.
“It’s really good to know how to motivate different people, because different people respond to different things,” she said.
At the end of each day, a “dog-tired” Olson would head back to camp.
“You’re staggering into the chow line,” she said. “The food tastes so good, because you’re so hungry. They could have fed me slop and I would have eaten seconds.”
After eating, Olson would head straight for her tent.
“You crawl into your tent and it’s super uncomfortable when you’re laying on rocks, but you just sleep so well, because you worked all day,” she said.
The biggest downside to sleeping in the tent – the black widow spiders.
“People would find spiders in their boots or crawling into their clothes,” Olson said. “That was a little scary to wake up to in the morning.”
After 20 consecutive 16-hour days, Olson was able to head home. She appreciated every minute of her first night on a mattress in a bedroom.
“I recognize all the special gifts we have here,” she said. “Being an athlete, I’m lucky to have access to doctors. I came back with a lot of smoke and ash in my lungs and the doctors had me on inhalers and stuff to get it out so I could be ready for rowing in the spring.
“I feel really lucky, because I know other people I worked with probably don’t have that.”
The experience was enough to convince her to work toward joining a hotshot crew – an elite group of wildfire firefighters – next summer.
“Everyone knows a hotshot crew,” Olson said.
Now a few months removed from the experience, Olson is back to being a student-athlete. She has gone from the fire’s frontline to fall quarter at Washington.
The things that make her a talented athlete helped her while fighting fires and the things she learned in Eastern Washington are helping her in the classroom, with her training and working with her teammates.
“Putting fire into crew, I’m a lot more organized and I can motivate a crew,” she said.
Olson uses each experience she encounters as a way to enhance other aspects of her life. Whether rowing, fighting fires or fulfilling her obligation to the National Guard, “The Machine” doesn’t stop.
