FireFighting

So my brother owns a natural resources consulting company, Sustainable Solutions. One of the contracts he has is to do prescribed burns. Basically a prescribed burn is when a piece of land is too rough or overgrown for mowing the best way to clear it out and encourage new growth and species is to burn it.

Being a professional paintball player means you have to have some sort of contract work or alternate type job to keep money in your pocket. The regular 9 to 5 desk job would tell you to kick rocks if you occasionally asked off for weeks at a time. There are not many pro players out there who can truly claim to only play paintball for a living. We would all love to be there and have been in the past but the truth is sponsorship is down this year. Enter firefighting.


This is the Engine and Ranger. The Engine tank holds 400 gallons and has a 200 ft hose reel on top, with multiple other hose lays available. The Ranger has a 100 gallon tank and 100 ft reel. We were working in an old Pine plantation that needed to be brought back to its natural state of mixed hardwood forest.



We had a 2 day burn with an understory burn of about 25 acres the first day.We backed the engine down our fireline and kept up a wet line to keep the fire contained.



The wind was predicted to be steady out of the north but it was very variable at times which made for some tense situations. The line we put down held perfectly and all the equipment was more than adequate for the situation.


It was a great 2 days of work. Two back to back 12 hour days, grinding away on the fireline will keep you in shape to play a little paintball. I am training my 3 man guys again tomorow so we will see how they do. Planning on going up to Crims as Arsenal and NE Hurricanes are going to be there, so I can show the squad how the pros do it. Do work