Page 369 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong
P. 369

   Top to bottom: Firefighting effort on the Carr Fire in August 2018; CAL FIRE trucks parked in Peterson’s Redding yard
“There were days when they had north of 150 doz- ers on the fire lines,”says Lanphear.“That set a very fast pace for us because when a private contractor on the fire has a breakdown, they have twenty-four hours to get their machine back out there. If they don’t, they lose their spot and get kicked off the fire and sacrifice thousands of dollars in wages. So we worked around the clock to make sure that didn’t happen.”
The Carr Fire was so intense and erratic, it sprout- ed firenadoes caused by intense heat rising rapidly into the atmosphere. “We had a dozer in our shop that got caught in a firenado,” recalls Lanphear. “A Redding firefighter got killed right next to it. The firestorm picked up his full-size pickup into the air and ejected him. When the truck finally landed, it looked like it had been in a car crusher.”The dozer
operator saw it all. “It literally blew the windows out of that dozer,” says Lanphear. “The operator panicked and kicked his seatbelt loose to get out, but the winds sucked him up to the top of the cab, then dropped him back in the seat, and he just held on for dear life. He was very, very lucky. He had some burns, but he was back to work in four days.”
The Carr Fire went on so long that Peterson saw lots of major breakdowns in the shop—engines, transmissions, and hydraulic failures. All the dust and smoke made it tough for operators to see, which caused broken windows, broken tracks and dozer blades, and lots of broken hoses. “The whole company really rallied around us,” says Lanphear. “They brought in generators and equipment every night. I told them to just knock on my door and we’d get them taken care of. It always seemed to
 CHAPTER 23 | 367
 




























































































   367   368   369   370   371