Blasbout blazes John Rodecap isn’t.

“I’m a fire junkie,” he said. “If you’re just sitting around, you’re not really living. You’ve got to push yourself.”

Jefferson County firefighter John Rodecap, who spent two weeks fighting wildfires in Colorado and Wyoming last month, says he's a junkie for battling blazes.

Rodecap, a 44-year-old Lecompton resident, spent two weeks July 15 to July 28 fighting wildfires in Colorado and Wyoming. He left again Friday to fight a wildfire in South Dakota.

“It’s an incredible rush to see a big fire,” he said. “I mean, this thing was huge. We’re talking about 150-foot flame lengths.”

Rodecap is a volunteer with the Jefferson County Fire Department and a paid shift lieutenant with the Prairie Band Potawatomi Reservation fire department. He was part of a three-man freelance crew that joined the U.S. Forest Service efforts to contain the Burn Canyon Fire near Norwood in southwest Colorado.

“We left here on Sunday the 14th, and we started working the afternoon of the 15th,” he said.

The crew’s arrival coincided with the fire growing from 15,000 acres to 27,000 acres in a single day.

“It was incredible,” said Rodecap, who grew up in Lawrence and Perry. “I saw a smoke cloud 15,000 feet tall that from 15 miles away looked like a nuclear explosion.”

Other observations:

While putting out “hot spots” in the fire’s wake, Rodecap often discovered unusual patterns of gravel on the ground.

“It had gotten so hot,” he said, “that the rocks exploded.”

Also in the fire’s wake, Rodecap said that when he “scratched down to the bare dirt” and sprayed water on the ground, “it would sizzle like you were pouring water on a frying pan … and this was a week after the fire had been through there.”

Caused by lightning, the fire thrived on dry conditions.

“There were days we were working in 17 percent humidity,” Rodecap said. “And they said the moisture in the fuel was like 2 percent.”

Most days, Rodecap drank four canteens of water by noon. “You sweat a lot,” he said. “I lost seven pounds in 14 days.” The crew worked at least 12 hours a day.

Rodecap said he never felt in danger.

“There was a time when a tree that was about the size of a telephone pole fell between me and another guy. I’m guessing we were about 10 feet apart,” he said. “I didn’t think much about it at the time, but later I realized that if it had fallen five feet in either direction, there’d be a funeral.”

Firefighters, he said, were well aware of the depth and breadth of the fire’s wrath.

“When it gets ugly, you just pull back to the next ridge and plan your next attack.”

The Burn Canyon Fire eventually consumed 31,300 acres, causing an estimated $5.75 million in damages.

Burn Canyon is within the Uncompahgre National Forest, between Durango, Colo., and Grand Junction, Colo .

On the way back to Kansas, Rodecap’s crew was dispatched to Wyoming.

“It was a much smaller fire 1,020 acres,” he said. “But it was in a canyon. The terrain was much more difficult; we were working on a 60-to 70-degree grade, the fire was below us and the ponderosa pines around us were going up like Roman candles.”

Rodecap said he hoped to go back next year.

“Oh, I’m definitely hooked,” he said. “It’s an awe-inspiring thing to see, especially when you’re from Kansas where the biggest fire we (Jefferson County Fire Department) ever had to deal with was a 400-acre grassfire.”

The pay is good, too.

“I made $5,000 in 17 days,” he said.