TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Tucson firefighters are thinking small for some of the most challenging calls they make.
Even though Tucson is a big active city there’s a lot of relatively wild land out there. So if you’re in the Tucson Fire Department a large truck is not always the best truck for the job. Sometimes you need something like a small all terrain vehicle.
You normally see Tucson Fire using the typical large, heavy fire trucks.
But rescues and fires can easily happen in terrain too rough for the big trucks.
That’s where ATV’s come in.
Over the weekend mountain bikers reported a small fire in the Fantasy Island Bike Park near Pantano and Irvington.
A truck couldn’t get to the site, but an all terrain vehicle from Station 17 could.
Firefighter Dwight Jackson says, “They realized they were going to need to use the UTV to get into there so they were able to extinguish the fire with some bladder bags and some hand tools. Without that resource, it may have been a half a mile plus walk into there with all those tools.”
Jackson says the city’s had two of the ATV’s for about four years. One’s on the east side, one on the west. Fully equipped they cost about $52,000 apiece.
He says before these vehicles, firefighters on something like a rescue call had to use precious time and energy to hike in and out.
That can be dangerous for the people they help, and the firefighters too.
“There's the exposure for rattlesnakes. We are in the desert. So very common as we take our pre planned trips out there that we will come across rattlesnakes. We have a couple areas in particular that are high risk for injury. So that's where we find we go most often, when cyclists crash. And then, now that it's summertime, the heat exposure and just people not being prepared when they go out.”
Firefighters often use a trailer for a quick way to bring the ATV down the road to the edge of the wild lands. There its off-road abilities can turn a back country rescue that might take hours into something accomplished in minutes.
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Craig Smith is a reporter for KGUN 9. With more than 40 years of reporting in cities like Tampa, Houston and Austin, Craig has covered more than 40 Space Shuttle launches and covered historic hurricanes like Katrina, Ivan, Andrew and Hugo. Share your story ideas and important issues with Craig by emailing craig.smith@kgun9.com or by connecting on Facebook and Twitter.
