For the past nine months, Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District (TMFPD) have been using two bulldozers for fire containment. They are the only ones in Washoe County to have those machines.
“You can’t put an amount of money on what these things can save when it comes to structures and the environment, the production rates these things can produce compared to hand crews and engines, its instrumental,” says TMFPD Fire Captain Brian Bunn.
Those dozers push all the brush and vegetation that could catch on fire, out of the fire's way, creating a defensible space.
Firefighters say even though the bulldozers allow you to do more work with less resources, operating them, isn’t easy.
“Operators when fully qualified will have a minimum of 500 hours operating these dozers,” says Bunn.
Right now they have five qualified people to operate those bulldozers but the goal is to have nine by next spring.
Firefighters say, one bulldozer can do 10 times the amount of work that a type one hand crew can do.
That means, one bulldozer can do 10 times the work of 20 people. They used it for the Jasper and Hungry Fires last month.
They say the damage done to the land is nothing compared to the amount of lives that could be saved. “For the catastrophic fires that we have here in the wildland interface areas, having a little of scared land versus saving hundreds and hundreds of homes,” says Bunn.
