FL Fire Break Plows

Custom here (on somebody elses land), before the permanent fire ban, renters used to run a 14' give or take tandem around a field of wheat stubble making a couple of laps for a fire break. White smoke was common place at the end of the season.

According to the employee I spoke with, these are used to fight active fires. I drive by them at least once a week. Took the pictures on Tuesday. Yesterday the truck was out.

I retired from the State of Michigan as a wildland firefighter. The fire plows that were designed and constructed in Michigan by our Forest Fire Experiment Station were mounted directly on the suppression units, instead of being trailer units. They were on dozers, skidders, and also on large off road trucks. These plows have been in use for decades. I hired on in 1978 and they were developed long before that. Here is a link of a picture of a mounted plow on a John Deere dozer.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/31085415@N03/6072043684/in/album-72157627373146503/

Forest service has a similar unit here but the plow is mounted to the dozer rather than a trailer.

Unlike out west most of our fires are confined to the under brush and never gets into the tree tops.

Paper company still has a fire tower just up the road but it is no longer maned since the area has become so populated. They just rely on the public to report fires now

looks like the trailer plow would create a wider fire break

when use in controlled burn. Plow around the burn area, light fire into the wind, after it has burned a good fire brake you can light around the rest of the burn.

Why would you use the plow instead of the dozer blade? I occasionally run a contract dozer for Cal Fire. I imagine it isn't used here due to shallow soils, rocky terrain, and roots. Would you agree? CA and the Forest Service are frowning more and more on the use of dozers because of environmental damage, though they are unhesitatingly used to protect populated areas.

Sometimes we did use the dozer blade instead, or have a dozer in front sort of clearing a path for second dozer to put in plow line. Plow is quicker than the dozer blade. With the blade, when you got a blade full, you had to push it off to the side. Even with it angled that can happen. The plow line ends up being about 6 to 8 feet wide, and it is typically moist soil so it creates an effective fire break.
Ideally, a plow line is put in, and in lots of cases somebody would be following up behind plow with a drip torch and lighting off fire side of the line. That fire would burn towards the main fire and create a wide plow line/black line area ahead of main fire. Then off road water units followed up catching any hot spots. Obviously there are times when all you are doing is flanking the fire, trying to pinch it in with no safe way to get ahead of a ripping fire with a dozer. Often on large pine type fires in Michigan, it takes a change in weather or cover type to get it contained. I would think the rocky terrain would be a huge limiting factor in the effectiveness of a fire plow. I have been to California twice during my career fighting fire, once with a hand crew and once on an overhead team, and agree a fire plow would not have worked well in the areas I was at.

Different usage as they do the break then start the fire.