Season.

Wildland firefighters from across the country gathered in Pine Valley last week for the southern area.

Heavy equipment operator Academy.

The firefighters trained to use heavy machinery like bulldozers to combat wildfires in the mountains.

I've been doing this for 26 years and running those are on fire is one of the most dangerous jobs there is, in my opinion.

When I started, it was trial and error.

So we learned by mistake and we just told ourselves.

What would normally take a decade or better for these students to gain this experience at their local unit.

Now they're getting this experience here in a week long training.

That's what we've been telling these students.

Take advantage of this class because it's not on a fire.

You're with a bunch of good coaches.

You're going to learn so much with.

The dozers and being in a forest and environment.

And those machines have to be capable of going in very adverse terrain.

And this academy takes those students, gives them exposure to that adverse terrain with the different types of equipment that we use.

I can tell you how to do it, but until you actually sit in the seat, that's when you do your best learning.

So hands on is by far the best way.

I've laid a lot of dozers on fire line, but I've never sat in the seat per se.

So this is my first opportunity to actually sit in the machine and see what the capabilities was of the machine and put in an adequate fire line and the way that I've seen over the last 19 years, you know, my, my coworkers do with with these dozers, you know, it's a it's a new gain respect for for what some of these guys do day in and day out on our fire line.

We were in that 80 to 90% range of taking the machines and the personnel to the max of what they would see, and most of it deals with steep ground, heavily timbered, a lot of rock involved and all of those things lend to a safety factor that causes our operators to be exposed to risk.

And so if we can take them in this controlled environment like we have this week and and teach them the proper way to operate in this environment, whenever it comes time for the fire, they can concentrate more then on on fire response.

It's very neat.

And you know, this academy, you know, shed some light on our local guys.

You know, the things that I could take home to my home unit that, hey, we're going to we're going to focus more on some of this training, some of this detailed tactics and things that we may not have thought of fighting fire with a dozer.

There's there's added levels of of tactics and safety that that goes into playing when you're effectively putting in fire line with the dozer.

So soak all that knowledge up.

Even if you're not on the tractor, talk to one of these operators and you can learn.

You can learn a lot by just talking with us.

The 49 instructors at the Academy have more than 700 years of combined experience operating heavy equipment and wildfires.