Wildland firefighters from Virginia and nine other states will gather June 6 – 10 at Longwood University in Farmville, Va., to attend the 2017 Virginia Interagency Wildland Fire Academy. The 313 firefighters represent 14 state agencies, seven federal agencies and 48 localities, counties and private entities.
“While all 11 courses are vital to the advancement in training of wildland firefighting, the one that is of great interest at the local level is the Advanced Tractor Plow Operations course,” John Miller, VDOF’s director of fire and emergency response, said. “This course expands upon the student’s safe and effective operation of our tractor plow units, which is one of the most important wildfire suppression tools we have.”
On-the-ground instruction and hands-on operation are utilized along with some classroom work on tactics and safety. The course is designed for firefighters who have some level of experience operating tractor plow units on wildfire suppression efforts. Just to be considered for participation in this course, the firefighter must have a valid CDL (commercial driver’s license), successfully passed the basic wildland firefighting courses (S-130/190/100), and have prior training on tractor plow operations. This year, only 18 people were selected to take part in the tractor plow class. And the nine instructors have a combined 200+ years of tractor plow experience. Since first being offered in 2001, more than 300 firefighters have successfully passed the course.
During the last 16 years, much of the equipment used by the Department of Forestry has changed considerably, and this year the firefighters will work with some of the newest and best available thanks to Gov. Terry McAuliffe and the Virginia General Assembly. Their combined efforts provided funding for the VDOF to purchase 42 new tractor plows and transports to replace units in the fleet that were between 25 and 30 years old.
VDOF Forestry Technician Henry Womack, who is one of the lead instructors for this year’s tractor plow course, said, “It is important for the students taking the course to be familiar with all types of dozers so that they are prepared for all situations.”
After one day of classroom work, the students will spend the rest of the week working on, maintaining and operating in the dozer. “When you are deep in the woods building a fire line, you can’t just call AAA when the dozer breaks down or gets hung up on a tree stump,” Womack said.
To pass this class, firefighters must be able to successfully drive the dozer through several different obstacle courses and then work to construct fire lines in the forest. The “final exam” involves operating the tractor plow at night during a live wildfire.
“A night op is a great test of the operator’s skill and preparedness because it’s a totally different experience than the ‘seat time’ they get during the day,” Womack said.
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