JACKSONVILLE, Ore. – With fire season approaching in Oregon, the Jacksonville Fire Department is bringing in heavy machinery to clear brush and create defensible space around the community.
The fire department is working with fire management services to deploy a mechanical masticator, a large piece of equipment designed to grind through vegetation and reduce wildfire fuel.
“It’s a remote control rubber tracked remote brush grinding machine, it’s a very proficient machine,” Brian Mulhollen, a fire and fuels management specialist, said.
The machines use spinning blades to cut through blackberry bushes, thick vegetation and even small trees. The ground-up material left behind doesn’t pose the same fire risk as standing vegetation.
“Even though if you have fuels on the ground it doesn’t mean that you have to remove them actually fire doesn’t really carry very heavily or quickly through masticated materials,” Mulhollen said.
Clearing vegetation at ground level is only part of the strategy. Mulhollen said the team also targets what firefighters call ladder fuels, which are materials above ground level in trees that help fire spread upward into tree canopies.
“We are able to cut and limb up and strategically go after what we call ladder fuels which ladder fuels are fuels above ground level in trees which help fire spread up into the trees,” Mulhollen said.
The work is aimed at creating defensible space to protect Jacksonville from wildfires.
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