Dozers are mainstays on construction sites, but less known are the machines' firefighting prowess, especially in the deadly wildfires in the Los Angeles area earlier this year.
The Los Angeles County Fire Department’s fleet of specially equipped dozers particularly stand out. Painted all in red, these dozers create fire breaks by scraping away flammable vegetation and debris. They also move dirt directly into the fire to try to extinguish it. A video of one went viral in January when it was used to push out abandoned cars blocking a road in Pacific Palisades so firefighters could get to the flames.
The department primarily uses 46-ton Cat D8R dozers, with 16-foot-wide blades, that have undergone extensive modifications to prepare for their dangerous tasks, according to an L.A. County video released last year about the dozers:
Unique to the county fire dozers is a two-seat cabin, designed to keep operators comfortable for long hours and seat the “dozer swamper,” who serves as the operator's guide when navigating the fire line, handles the radio communications and helps ensure safety.
The windows are made of tempered-oven glass to handle extreme heat. The dozers are also equipped with fire curtains designed by NASA to protect the occupants from the intense heat and flames. The cabin has two air purifiers to keep out the smoke and pollutants. They run on a 395-horsepower Cat engine and can hold up to 165 gallons of fuel for 12 hours of operation.
And, of course, they get a bright red coat of paint. Check out the video below by Quinn Cat from 2022 of a newly painted dozer getting ready for the department:
Darren Beaty, who has been a firefighting construction equipment operator for the department for more than 38 years, said in the county video that the department has a dozer ready 24 hours a day, 365 days a week to respond to fires. It also has experienced – and brave – operators willing to go into harm’s way to protect people and property.
The operators undergo extensive training through the Heavy Fire Equipment Operator Academy.
Here’s a CalFire video on what it takes to be a heavy equipment operator:
