Investigative report on a Cal Fire rollover in 2007

I didnt know that had happen so close to me. There was another big fire there this year but hopefully they didnt lose any body. I can now see why one would wear a full body harness and helmet in that situation. I still think it would be very interesting to do the fire dozer work. Not for the fire fighting glory but because the areas you get to go in and see is impressive. And I like doing steep hill side work.

Karl

After reading the report, I can only see one major over-riding cause of the fatality - an operator who had not been fully trained to use the tractor he was operating, and who lacked experience on that same tractor.
When he ended up in a dangerous position, he undertook inappropriate moves that resulted in the rollover and his death. All the other accident factors were minor factors.
Whoever placed this operator on a tractor that he was not capable of controlling, in all situations .. and in particular, in dangerous situations .. is as responsible as the operator himself, for the fatality.

"Mans Got to Know His Limitations" (Clint Eastwood)

Having done quite a bit of wildland firefighting and a little cat skining I think this is rather typical of wildland firefighting accidents. The fire is at an early stage where overhead is lacking, comunications are poor, and pride is invovled. Training dictates that one doesn't do what they are not trained for but nearly every firefighter has been placed in similar positions before and they have managed to overcome the difficulties. There is always resistence to get on the radio and ask for help. All firefighters love to talk about the mistakes of others as if they would have done something else. Basically the dozers were committed to a one way down hill run once they got on slopes that steep. There should have been a dozer boss sizing up the terrain and marking out the route. Dozers can not back up much of a slope. Hand held radios are great but almost impossible to hear in a dozer. Adrenaline is also high making it hard to slow down. These things are just going to happen. Sadly, even if someone on the ground had tried to stop him, it is doubtful that unless the dozer operater knew the person giving the orders that they might have been ignored in the stress of the situation. It is very difficult to give orders to a stranger is such a situation. The basic rules of wildland firefighting are to always have lookouts, escape routes, safety zones and communications. The dozer operators had no lookouts, they had no way to escape and they refused to go to a safe place, and they had poor communications. Most accidents are similar to this one.

Report was intriging to see how Cal-Fire wrote up the sequence of events, operator dialogue, and RC to roll-over leading to operators unfortunate death. Similar to Equipment driver, this accident is in the backyard to many of us.

Hi, Folks.
I have read that report before. I'm mostly with OzDozer here. Lack of training and experience on the machine in question, which was normally the other operator's machine, was the major contributing factor here. There are a couple of questions that I personally would like to see answered.

1. Who assigned the deceased operator to a dozer with which he was unfamilar, especially in view of the fact that his normal machine was available and that the normal operator for the overturned machine was also available?

2. Why was that assignment made in view of the fact that the regular operator for that machine WAS available and that the deceased's normal machine was also available?

How-wevver, I would add another contributing factor that it is now too late to change for this particular operator, attitude. He put himself and the machine at risk because he 'had' to rescue the stalled machine to pay back for a previous event when he himself had been rescued by the other operator.

I would also mention that, IMHO, it is not very smart to let your machine get on an outward side slope in steep country while cutting a bench or road, especially in material with known unstable characteristics, as in this case.

I am sorry that this operator has paid the supreme price but I hope that his loss is not wasted by ignoring the lessons that could be learned from these events.

I also take my hat off to all those courageous men and women who fight fires, especially wildland fires such as this one, to protect our various counties and communities.

The CDF organization is just a ramshackle outfit, from the guy at the top in Sac, right on down to the people that run the local units, not one person in that organization will take blame for anything and its alwasy pass the buck, if someone is displeased with another person in their unit they do stupid stuff just like in this unfortunate accident sending an operator out on a strange unit when other possibilities exsist, its a get even company and they step on their own.
Their training for the private contracors is a joke, I would hope that the training that the company people get would be somewhat better, the seasonal help doesn't get much in the way of training either but somewhat better than we do, although the US forest service does not have a behind the wheel training program for the people that drive the crew buggies and engines that is real scary, some young kid running a crew buggy with 15 other people in them and no training particulary in the mountian roads no thanks.

This is the first time i have read this report on the dozer rollover and while i agree with the number of reasons given that led to this tragic accident and the other post before mine i lean towards the fact that while a dozer regardless of model can be a very effective fire fighting tool there is some terrain where they do not belong, the big sir mountain range is one of those areas not well suited for dozers and often like aaron said in his post the personell overlooking these fires are lacking in many areas comonsense the bigest one, to many times someone put in charge of a dozer group has no idea what a dozer is capable of or the terain the fire is burning in and these people are deciding where to put in a dozer line,there will allways be operators who think they can go somewere they shouldn't for various reasons
and put themselves and there machine at risk for no good reason so it is important that the people making the decison to put in a dozerline no what there doing before comitting a dozer down a ridge it deosnot belong. in the
80's during the las politas fire i followed two 46a's an hd21 and to d6d's on a
d6b and we put in nearly 2 miles of dozer line over 100ft wide and when the fire got there it jumped it so fast your head spun, so putting a line down a ridge 20ft wide at best in brush is a ussless excersise forsure,but no matter the reason the loss of a catskiner and his machine is never good.