Suppression Tools & Equipment

Structural firefighting is built around water. Wildland firefighting is built around a hole in the ground — a strip of bare dirt, cut by hand, sometimes for miles. That is why wildland fire has its own family of tools that exist nowhere else, several of which were invented by firefighters who got tired of carrying two things.

This requirement has two parts:

• 8a — demonstrate three hand tools unique to wildland fire suppression, and use one to construct a fireline
• 8b — discuss seven other tools, equipment, or apparatus unique to wildland fire suppression

Requirement 8a: Three Hand Tools and a Fireline

You will need real tools in your hands for this one. Sources worth asking: your local fire department (many have a wildland cache), a state forestry office, a national forest or park district, a Firewise community group, or your council camp ranger. Many departments are genuinely glad to show Scouts their equipment.

The core hand tools

Pulaski. A combination axe and adze (a hoe-like blade set at right angles to the handle) on a single head. Named for Ed Pulaski, the ranger who survived the 1910 Big Blowup and designed it afterward. Chop roots and small material with the axe side, then flip it and grub, dig, and trench with the adze side. It is the signature wildland tool and the best choice in rooty, brushy, or timbered ground.

• How it is used: feet apart and stable, swing controlled and close to the body, cutting only what needs cutting. Chop the roots first, then turn the tool and dig the line to mineral soil.
• Safety: clear a swing circle of at least ten feet, never swing toward your feet or legs, sheath it when carrying, and carry it on the downhill side with the head forward and low so a stumble does not drive it into you.

McLeod. A large hoe-and-rake combination head on a long handle, invented by a Forest Service ranger in 1905. The rake teeth pull loose duff, needles, leaves, and light brush off the line; flipped over, the flat hoe edge scrapes to mineral soil and cuts light roots.

• Best in: grass, light brush, pine needle litter, and duff — the fastest tool for moving a lot of loose fuel.
• Safety: the teeth face down when you are carrying it, never up, and never lay it teeth-up on the ground.

Fire shovel. Not a garden shovel. A wildland fire shovel has a narrow, pointed, sharpened blade with tapered sides, so it digs, scrapes, cuts light roots, and throws dirt onto flames. It may be the single most versatile tool on the line.

• Uses: cut and scrape line, throw dirt to smother flame, stir and separate material during mop-up, and dig out ash pits.
• Safety: keep the edge sharp (a dull tool takes more force and slips more), carry it at your side with the blade forward and low.

Other tools you may be offered instead, all of which count as unique to wildland fire:

• Fire rake (council rake or council tool) — a rake head made of sharpened triangular blades, standard across the Southeast for cutting line through pine straw.
• Combi tool — a combination shovel-and-pick used for digging and grubbing, popular with smokejumpers because it is compact.
• Hazel hoe / adze hoe — a heavy grubbing hoe for hard soil and dense root mats.
• Backpack pump (bladder bag) — a five-gallon water bag with a hand-operated trombone pump, carried on the back for spot fires and mop-up.
• Flapper or swatter — a rubber flap on a handle for beating out flame in grass.
• Drip torch — a fuel canister with a wick and a looped spout that lays a line of fire, used in burnout and prescribed fire.

Constructing a fireline

A fireline (also called a control line or handline) is a strip cleared of all burnable material down to mineral soil — the layer with no organic content left in it. If a fire can find a root, a needle, or a leaf in your line, it can cross.

Line construction breaks into three jobs, and on a real crew they happen in sequence as people move along the line:

1. Cut. Sawyers and pulaski work removes brush, small trees, limbs, and roots.
2. Scrape. McLeods and shovels clear the duff, needles, and loose material away.
3. Dig. The line is taken down to mineral soil across its full width, and the loose material is thrown to the green side, away from the fire.

A few standards to demonstrate:

• Width depends on flame length and fuel. A rule of thumb is that line width should be roughly one and a half times the flame length in the adjacent fuel. Grass may need only two or three feet; heavy brush and timber need much more.
• Anchor first. Start from a barrier — a road, a stream, a rock outcrop, or already-burned ground — so fire cannot get behind you. This is Watch Out #8, and it matters more than anything else about the line.
• Cup trench on slopes. On a hillside, dig a shallow trench with a lip on the downhill side so rolling burning material — pine cones, bark, logs — is caught rather than allowed to roll below and start a new fire beneath you.
• Throw material to the green side. Putting slash on the burned side hands the fire more fuel and can carry it across.
• Tie in. Every line must connect to another barrier at both ends. A line that just stops accomplishes nothing.
• The one-lick method. Crews often move continuously, each person taking one or two strokes and stepping forward, so the line progresses steadily rather than each person finishing a section.

Requirement 8b: Seven Other Tools, Equipment, or Apparatus

You need seven, and you get to choose which seven — so pick items you can genuinely explain rather than the seven you can name fastest. The catalog below is deliberately longer than seven; choose from it, or bring something you have seen in your own area that is not on the list.

Apparatus and vehicles

• Wildland engine. Built for off-road work, with high clearance, four-wheel drive, an all-terrain chassis, a water tank, and a pump. Wildland engines are typed by tank capacity, pump capacity, hose complement, and staffing. Many can pump and roll — drive slowly along the fire edge while spraying, which no structural engine does.
• Water tender. A large mobile water supply that shuttles between a water source and the engines, or supplies a portable tank at a staging area. Without tenders, engines in the backcountry go dry within minutes.
• Dozer. Builds line fast and wide in suitable ground, and often works with a dozer boss and a swamper who scout ahead. Limited by slope, rock, and soil, and it leaves the largest scar of any tool.
• Tractor-plow. A tractor towing a fire plow, common in the sandy soils of the Southeast, that opens a line at a walking pace.
• Crew carrier (crew buggy). The purpose-built vehicle that transports a 20-person crew and its tools, water, food, and gear to the line.
• Mobile command and communications units. Vehicles carrying repeaters, radios, and the incident command post’s electronics.

Water handling equipment

• Portable pump. A small gasoline pump that draws water from a creek, pond, or portable tank, letting crews run hose far from any road.
• Portable tank (pumpkin). A collapsible open tank set up in a clearing so tenders can dump and engines can draft, creating a water point.
• Hard suction hose and forestry hose. Lightweight, small-diameter hose (1½-inch and 1-inch) designed to be carried up a mountain, along with the fittings, gated wyes, nozzles, and reducers that make a progressive hose lay possible.
• Bladder bag / backpack pump. Five gallons of water with a hand pump on your back, for spot fires and mop-up where hose will never reach.
• Fold-a-tank and helibucket. Water storage and the suspended bucket a helicopter dips into it.

Aviation resources

• Air tanker. Fixed-wing aircraft dropping long-term retardant to slow the fire’s spread and support ground crews. Very Large Air Tankers carry many thousands of gallons.
• Single Engine Air Tanker (SEAT). A converted agricultural aircraft, inexpensive to run and effective on initial attack.
• Scooper. An amphibious aircraft that skims water from a lake or river, allowing fast repeat cycles when water is close.
• Helicopter. Typed by capacity, delivering water by bucket or belly tank, moving crews and cargo, and inserting rappellers.
• Air Attack platform. A fixed-wing aircraft orbiting the fire from which aviation is coordinated.
• Infrared mapping aircraft and drones. Night flights and unmanned aircraft that map heat through smoke and produce the perimeter map the next operational period is planned around.

Ignition and specialty equipment

• Drip torch. The standard ignition device, holding a fuel mix (commonly diesel and gasoline) with a wick and looped spout that lays fire in a controlled line.
• Fusee. A road-flare-style ignition device used to start small burnouts.
• Plastic sphere dispenser (aerial ignition). A machine in a helicopter that injects chemical spheres and drops them so they ignite seconds later on the ground — the way large prescribed burns and remote burnouts are lit.
• Terra torch. A vehicle- or trailer-mounted device that throws a stream of burning gelled fuel for heavy fuel ignition.

Monitoring and safety equipment

• Belt weather kit. A sling psychrometer, compass, and slope meter that lets a firefighter take on-site readings of temperature, relative humidity, and wind — because the forecast is for a region and the fire is on one hillside.
• Remote Automated Weather Station (RAWS). A permanent or portable weather station feeding fire danger and fire behavior models.
• Portable repeater. Extends radio coverage into drainages where line-of-sight fails.
• Fire shelter. Covered in detail in Req 6a.
• Incident Response Pocket Guide. The orange reference book carrying the 10, the 18, and LCES.

You now know the whole system — history, harms, benefits, prevention, behavior, safety, tactics, organization, and tools. Requirement 9 is where you stop studying and go do something with it.