More National Guard trucks carrying firefighters

California National Guard transporting firefighters open top truck

Yesterday we wrote about having seen four California National Guard trucks transporting wildland firefighters in the back, open-top, cargo area of the vehicles, and we got a photo of one. Today we saw two more of the trucks as they entered the staging area at the fairgrounds in Yreka, California.

In these photos it is obvious that there is no roll over protection or seat belts.

Safety Officers on fires frequently, and correctly, tell firefighters that the wearing of seat belts is required. In fact in many states, including California, it is the law.

Our fire leaders need to take a stand on this. We have reached out to the U.S. Forest Service and CAL FIRE for their stand on this. We’ll let you know what we discover.

California National Guard transporting firefighters open top truck

California National Guard transporting firefighters open top truck

California National Guard transporting firefighters open top truck

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Author: Bill Gabbert

After working full time in wildland fire for 33 years, he continues to learn, and strives to be a Student of Fire.

23 thoughts on “More National Guard trucks carrying firefighters”

  1. Wow, so wound up! I agree we should find a safer way to transport people than in the back of stakebed cargo truck. For any of those that upset because this is viewed as unsafe, do you use your safety equipment in your vehicles? I would encourage you to do so.

    The only way we can reduce the number of lives lost is quit doing unsafe things. NOBODY is saying we have to stop working, just reduce the risk where we can. And vehicle accidents are low hanging fruit.

    Just yesterday, I was 400 feet from the road on a steep slope, with rolling rocks, snags and stinging bugs. Yes, it is part of the job. If there was a safer way to do it, we would have. Getting rid of cargo trucks as people haulers would be safer.

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  2. I am a firefighter. I am all about safety. FOR CRYIN’ OUT LOUD!!!!! Let’s all just go home. If you are worried about people in the back of a truck, then we certainly shouldn’t have people fighting fire. They might get hurt fighting the fire. There are so many things that can kill us, falling snags, rolling rocks, burnovers….. Risks are everywhere, let’s manage them and move on. If they had other transportation, fine. If not, I’ll get in the back of one of those trucks any day.

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    1. No need to get upset.

      I just dont understand the idea of going about mitigating risk, unless you cant, then go ahead and do it anyway.

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  3. Education and risk management are great ideas. Lots of places have programs and protocols in place.

    We still seem to kill a lot of firefighters in vehicles though.

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    1. It seems to me that I can train my driver to avoid holes, ditches, and being burnt over while I am riding on the tank of a type 6 fighting fire. Or I could just not ride on the tank.

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  4. Drawing a deep breath on this one…

    I will tell you (as one who has experienced two ground vehicle rollovers as an innocent passenger; non-fire, non-military) there is no such silver bullet as “roll over protection”. There are devices- most commonly called “roll bars” that mitigate some kinetic forces but also introduce their own kinetic forces regardless of seat belt use. (Please don’t ask me how I know).

    Further, as a US Army paratrooper and a career (USFS) wildland firefighter and incident management teams member I will add that I learned some hard lessons regarding the injection of US Military units into wildland firefighting operations. Nothing against the individual GI joes and GI janes, their NCOs or Officers- it injects a load of issues, and distractions, into the fire ground that would be mostly off topic here.

    Regarding seat belts, where do you draw the line? School buses don’t have seat belts for some (arguably) very good reasons (for sake of brevity I won’t attempt to list them here). How about Railroads? Not often but most of us know that fire crews have been moved by train on occasion over recent decades. Where is the line for seat belts? Who wants to step up as the decider?

    Having briefly written I will add that, I too, know of (however infrequent) horrible accidents, with death, that have occurred with FS stakeside crew truck and Army troop truck roll overs over recent decades.

    It is a tough nut to crack. Perhaps, like life in general, there is no one size fits all answer.

    Maybe (like most activities I can think of) wildland firefighting transportation comes down to education and risk management rather than (imperfect) protective gear.

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  5. If there were enough adequate of anything would they be using NG to begin with? Could it be safer? Yes. Are the troopers in the LMTVs trained to ride in tactical vehicles, in adverse conditions? Yes. I agree on safety, wholeheartedly. However, when the NG, or any other branch of the military rolls anywhere they do so as a package. With their own vehicles. I would almost guarantee this was a military call to use the LMTVs. Would the IC of a fire so short on resources refuse the help of the military because of tactical vehicle use? Obviously few would, apparently some would not.

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  6. City and volunteer FFs go through quite a process before driving apparatus, yet it seems this doesn’t apply to drivers of wildland crew rigs. And that right front tire is just waiting to take advantage of an exhausted driver and wander off…

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  7. Oh for crying out loud!Everyone should just stay home on their couches where its safe.If the safety nazis have it their way firefighting in general will be far too dangerous.I guess we could equip these trucks with several dozen airbags and automatic lap restraints like roller coasters.If memory serves,many of the past accidents were due to drivers being to tired to drive.Perhaps better driver training is needed,not more costly equipment.There is enough real problems that need addressed without trying to create new ones.

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    1. Bob – guess you can categorize me as one of your “Safety Nazis”: besides being a Safety Officer, I’m also an OSC1 and the father of 2 children who have fought numerous wildfires. As for your comment about “just stay home”, I’m sure that many of the spouses, parents, children, friends and co-workers of the 427 wildland firefighters who have died on wildfires from 1990 – 2013 wished that those folks had “just stayed home” so that they would still be alive and with us. So Bob, keep smoking those un-filtered Camels, never wear your seat belt, and oh yeah, never carry a fire shelter if you should ever go on a wildfire: I’m sure your loved ones will be glad that us “Safety Nazis” aren’t imposing our will on you.

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      1. I’m a “Safety Nazis” also. Prevention of accidents and near misses is our job (and everyone’s) along with providing as safe a work environment as possible. And that can be very,very challenging under the conditions we are often exposed to. Most of us try to work in the system and use a polite, within the chain of command approach. Observe a safety issue, inform the appropriate supervisor of it, and follow up to see appropriate action was carried out. But our job is still to ensure that everyone goes home safe and uninjured. Over 35 years there have been very rare occasions when I have had to get in another’s face for attitude adjustment or take active, direct, immediate action to prevent a unsafe act or condition. Most of the time it’s a calm, but firm: “Let’s stop and re-assess what the goals are and how we are doing the task”. Once I had the most unpleasant and very emotionally draining responsibility of informing a persons family of a member’s death while working for the agency. No one should have to do this for a preventable incident. That’s why we have safety officers.

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  8. Joseph, during an 11-year period there were 320 roll overs of the military 5-ton truck in which 62 people were killed. For a while the new 2.5 ton truck was restricted to 30 mph because it rolled over so often.

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  9. Is there any evidence, ever, of a firefighter of any background injured while riding in a National Guard truck?

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    1. So, doing something unsafe can be considered safe until someone get hurt or killed? Thats when we can say, “yep, we should not have been doing that”.

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    2. Joseph – see Pat Kelly’s info on the Anderson fire in Idaho that killed 4 FFs in 1987 when a military vehicle rolled. It was in Bill’s original write-up on this issue.

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  10. So dead or injured WFF are OK in an accident if they are NG or some other military branch. What is going on is still wrong.

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    1. We make the soldiers take some Basic fire training, give them yellow & green Nomex, require that they carry fire shelters, and then transport them like this? A liability lawsuit waiting to happen!

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  11. Curtis is correct; these are all California National Guard (CNG) soldiers called up to support the fires. The CNG trucks are NOT transporting civilian firefighters.

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  12. I was part of that stupid looking crowd wading those PT belts…..

    But you know what some of those GI troop trucks probably have exemptions that other civilian truck do not have….

    So now that we have FFTR’s riding around in US Army vehicles as they have done for 60 years…..we somehow arrive at the conclusion, they are unsafe.

    Guess those FFTR’s better lace up their Whites, Nicks, and Hawthorne LPC’s and start to hiking….

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  13. This is ironic considering that Army troops must wear reflective belts during road runs for pt. My son hates looking “stupid” as he says.

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