Wildland Fire Training

Shortly after arriving back in Apple Valley and getting settled in front of my daughter's house, I was invited by my son-in-law, Chief Hulbert, to accompany him on a training exercise with the Fire Academy class at the the Victor Valley College where he is an instructor.

The exercise for the day was how to deal with wildland fires. We met at an open field on the property of a cement plant in Victorville. They were to set the field full of tumble weeds on fire and practice controlling the fire and putting it out. BUT for my second time at doing this, the County Fire Marshal said the winds in the area were too high. So they proceeded to PRETEND they had a fire to control.



One of the things the class practiced was doing a Consecutive Hose Lay. This consisted of one squad (5 or 6 persons) connecting an Attack Hose to an engine and controlling a bush fire by laying down a path of water wide enough to slow down or stop a small brush or grass fire.



The squat starts out with a 100-foot hose and as they proceed they add another 100-foot hose that they carried in a back pack while the hose is still charged (pressurized) by using a hose clamp. (see below) (be sure to Click on a picture to enlarge)











After the new section of hose is connected, the clamp is removed and the squad continues their mission.





Of course this all takes a large amount of water. A Water Tender supplies water to the engine to keep its water tank at a high level.







Of course, after several squads performed their consecutive hose lay, the water tender gets low on water. So off to find a fire hydrant to refill the tender. The hydrant we found had a stiff valve.



Chief Hulbert always feels better when his engine or tender has a full tank of water. You will notice all the radios that he carries. He is monitoring the San Bernardino County Dispatch and Apple Valley fire frequencies to keep up to date on any fire activities.



Then it was back to the engine and connect up the hose to pump water.





Then we heard over the radios that there was a major structure fire in Apple Valley. Chief Hulbert kept a close ear to the radios because if he had not been one of the instructors for the college that day, he would have been the Battalion Chief for that fire. As it was, another BC was on scene to take his place.



It is never good to have a structure fire of any kind. This was what all the fire fighting activities was about.