Slashburner by Nick Raeside

Author:Nick Raeside
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fire fighters, British Columbia, Biography, Slashburning, Logging, Autobiographies, Memoir
ISBN: 9781550178999
Publisher: Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd.
Published: 2020-09-19T00:00:00+00:00

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“A pump can be ruined in minutes if proper operating procedures are not followed.”

—From a BC Ministry of Forests handbook

7

Tracks in the Mud

The four traditional elements—air, fire, earth and water—are of significant importance when it comes to fire control and slashburning. Air, in the form of wind applied to a fire, can have disastrous consequences. Water, when added to earth, creates mud, which can cause problems when heavy machinery encounters it. Fortunately mud isn’t encountered too often during firefighting operations in the dry summer months, so wheeled equipment rarely gets mired down. At other times of the year, equipment that runs on steel tracks is more appropriate for the ground conditions. This is when bulldozers become invaluable.

The bulldozer, or Cat, is an ingenious invention, as it can climb steep slopes and go across soft ground that would defeat any wheeled vehicle. They’re not invincible, though, and when I started working in the woods, I soon discovered that when one gets stuck, it’s really stuck. Sometimes it can take hours to get one out, particularly if there aren’t any stumps close by to enable it to winch itself out. This was the case when a large Cat that was building fireguard on a steep block at Hope Creek got into difficulties while I was keeping an eye on it. The few stumps that were within reach of the winch cable were quite inadequate and popped out like corks as the operator tried to extricate himself using a combination of winch and reverse gear on the tracks, leaving the Cat bogged down deeper in the mud.

It took us several hours to get the machine unstuck, particularly since we didn’t have a chainsaw to cut pieces of log to place under the tracks. We had to scour the hillside for chunks of wood that were big enough for the job but light enough to be dragged down to the mired machine. The operator would push the blade down so that the body of the Cat was lifted off the ground, and we’d crawl under the tracks and fit the logs into place. That wasn’t a lot of fun, what with the mud dripping off the tracks that were suspended ominously above our backs and the swarm of blackflies waiting for us to emerge. They didn’t seem to mind the language we were using each time the blade was raised and the body of the machine sank back into the mud, taking all our hard work with it, but they probably couldn’t hear it over the noise of the engine. Each time I was underneath those tracks I’d wonder what would happen if the hydraulics suddenly let go, but eventually I decided that perhaps being crushed by thirty-five tons of metal might be preferable to being eaten alive by bloodsucking insects.

Getting a bulldozer unstuck from mud was a tricky business, but some operators were masters of the art. Ron was the best, having had much practice operating his Cat in the West Columbia loonshit.

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