Fire

Arborist Forum

Help Support Arborist Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
We use ours year round. EMS calls, they are a lot easier to deal with our local driveways. And, most importantly, they have winches, so when the ambulance makes a poor choice of parking place...

We have enough room to keep them all inside and heated, keep the unstaffed stations at 45°.
 
It's easy sometimes for the command structure to get too goal focused, and they can forget about the human element.

That's why it's good for us to say NO if we feel unsafe.
 
It's easy sometimes for the command structure to get too goal focused, and they can forget about the human element.

That's why it's good for us to say NO if we feel unsafe.

Yup. It's easy to get that "I can do that" attitude. Sometimes we can...and get away with it. Sometimes not, too.
A couple of years ago I was running dozer on a fire. They wanted me to walk it up a ridge line and start cutting. Time was very tight and the winds were picking up.. There was slick-rock to cross and it had some slope to it. You can guess the rest. The dozer stayed on it's feet but it slid sideways a long way and made a couple of 360s before it fetched up against some timber. I never should have tried that crossing but I let a dozer boss talk me into it. That was my mistake, not his. He was just a kid without a lot of real experience. I should have told him no. Pride got in the way of judgement.
I always figure I'll do everything I can but I won't let somebody else put me in a position that I know is dangerous. Okay, wrong word...I won't let somebody else put me in a position that's stupid.
 
The IRPG has a good section on how to turn down risk. I have used that outline successfully myself. The IC wanted a burning euc cut down but it was in loose shale and 100% slope. In addition the tree was burning from ground level to 20' up. He asked me to cut it, I said "No" and he said "Fine". He later told me he didn't think it could be done just thought maybe I was crazy enough to try it. He was less than half my age and truthfully he should never have asked.
 
My falling pard and I turned down an assignment last year, along with three Shot crews. Too steep, too many trees falling on their own above us, too much risk. At 300' above the creek below, our snags would run to the bottom and blow up.

The Div trainee wanted to be able to say he had line on all sides of his Division. The problem was there was no reason to on that leg. It was 1,000 vert feet up and died off at a cliff face.

Two days of rain had squashed the fires advance, & it was late season. The fire couldn't even push past 5,500 feet before it fizzled out.

I'll be called a ***** before I go against my gut instinct on a fire.
 
I just completed the required annual fire training for faller today. The FSTEP class really stressed weather and climate change though I felt it was too heavy on the hand crew side of things considering most of us stay in or close to our vehicles.
 
Back
Top