Driver training for Bay Area Search and Rescue

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I want one of these.

Bay Area Search and Rescue in the United Kingdom conducts driver training with their Hagglund BV206 all terrain amphibious vehicle.

Here’s more information about those folks:

We are an all Terrain Rescue Team working in partnership with Cumbria Fire & Rescue and Lancashire Fire & Rescue. We specialise in quicksand, snow and flood rescue and all-terrain recovery and support using our Hagglund BV206 all terrain amphibious rescue vehicles, 4×4’s and trained personnel. We also assist the Coastguard, Police, Ambulance Service and First Responders on and around the ‘unique’ Morecambe Bay, Lake District and North Lancashire area.

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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.

7 thoughts on “Driver training for Bay Area Search and Rescue”

  1. Thanks OLD MSgt–we need you as one of our (world wildland fire community] as a Research and Development guy! The perfect “Big Iron” on steroids would be a M113 with a six way dozer blade or tractor-plow option! Would make “Tim the Toolman” want to cry–seriously we need folks in R&D to look at all options!

    Thanks for the input

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  2. (This comment was put with the wrong article, so it’s being moved here.)

    Odd that the plentiful reserves of tracked vehicles in Camp Shelby are more often acquired by police SWAT teams, but firefighters rely on wheeled trucks which have poor offroad mobility and burn because they are soft-skinned.
    I’m sure this will go nowhere, but for those interested M113s have been converted into “brush trucks”, can tow trailers, and be fitted with whatever an agency might like. Their aluminum armor hulls are easy to modify and more than adequate for fire protection.. M548 are more common wildland firefighting conversions, but they have little crew space and NO ARMOR. You could drive a 113 THROUGH a burnover, OVER a burning car, and off-road instead of being roadbound and destroyed like large conventional apparatus. They are designed to protect crews from NAPALM. They go where wheeled trucks dare not. They are dead simple, and easy to maintain. They can protect other vehicles, recover stuck vehicles, or load up with firefighters and get out of Dodge.
    Plenty of vids on Youtube including a Danish 113 with an internal skid, but you can integrate brush truck or other gear on the roof and leave the crew compartment free to protect personnel. Aberdeen Proving Ground did APC and tank (!) firefighting conversions but except for military range clearance it seems no one in the US (as contrasted with Europe) cares. Their office will happily work with interested parties. (2 M113 fit on a standard flatbed, BTW)
    If your vehicles aren’t fireproof, you are doing it wrong. Your local companies and shops can do the conversions. (I’m not selling anything.) You can drive a vanilla 113 straight through a fire and get to your people. Every year we have fires and fatalities, yet people rely on delicate trucks for what is essentially combat.
    Google Image Search “fire fighting M113″ and “fire fighting tank conversions” then apply your personal experience to how you’d use such vehicles with or without mods. Link below is an aircraft firefighting 113 from the Viet Nam war. The idea is not new. (Burning aircraft with weapons loads tend to take out soft trucks, so lead with armor.)
    http://www.firetrucks-atwar.com/images/Long_binh_3.JPG

    A small force of 113s could either be trailered to contact or drive on their own. It wouldn’t break the bank. They are easily the most successful armored vehicle in history, you can get them on request (you send the flatbed), and your departments likely have vets who have driven them.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M113_armored_personnel_carrier

    Protective cages or even glass block driver stations like the Israelis use would give 360-degree vision, and crew cooling vests are old news. You could get (or perhaps borrow from the Guard in an emergency) thermal sights which allow you to drive through smoke you couldn’t see through. Ask your Iraq war vets, and BTW tech is better now.

    German firefighting Marder conversions:
    http://www.abload.de/image.php?img=marderifvconvertedtofig5kd.jpg

    You wouldn’t drive an unarmored truck down an MSR in Iraq, why take one to a fire which makes a few guerillas look like a joke by comparison?

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  3. WE as an international fire community must continue to look at all possible opportunities to prevent and suppress wildfires. If there is a better means to transport fire crews or provide suppression capabilities, we owe that much to those who have made the ultimate sacrifice to save lives, property and conserve the worlds wildland resources. Maybe not everything will work out but to continually do the same thing over and over again is just plain insanity.
    The Matchbox/Mattel toy company released a in 2012 futuristic wildland firefighting toy vehicle called a Fire Stalker. Maybe, just maybe the Fire Stalker is not too far from reality. Check out Matchbox/Mattel’s website

    God bless the 2013 Granite Mountain Hotshots.

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      1. Bill–no–goggle Matchbox Fire Stalker two fotos showing one red model and one yellow moddle with snozzle extended

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  4. Known as a SUSV in US Army terms (Small Unit Supply Vehicle) or variants thereof….

    Gosh with all the other equipment such as Inciweb and the airtanker program….

    How is that HUMVEE fire truck project working for BLM?

    Think the USFS and USDOI could afford the tooling and parts for these things let alone a SUSTAINMENT program.

    Nice to wish for things…another to pay, fix, support and tool up for these unique vehicles…….

    Unique enough to wish you had a Stateside supply warehouse for these ….NIFC and all other caches got a direct line to Haaglund……..like the C27J…

    you are going to wish you had!!!! Good Luck to y’aaallllll!!

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