Farmer firefighters
Camas Creek Rangeland Fire Protection Association. How great it is that local residents can now be trained to use farm and other city equipment to fight wildfires in their first crucial minutes to try to save lives and property. Many years ago a local resident could face criminal charges for doing this on public land that bordered their private property, but those times have changed.
There’s training and certification in Dubois, Idaho, where local residents are planning with the BLM and Forest Service. These collaborations are known as Rangeland Fire Protection Associations (RFPA). Here’s Steve Gilger, Treasurer. I've been with the RPA for quite a few years, and it's local farms and ranches that have trained their employees to fight wildland fire. Farmers have tractors and disks and they can go around it. There's the county equipment, some of the road graders and bulldozers putting in fire line. Riverbend has a weed truck for weed spraying and also firefighting that carries 850 gallons just dedicated for firefighting. Board member Marty Own. Speaker3: We go through the basic red card training and then like this, every year we do a recertification just to keep us up on the use of the radios so we can communicate better with those guys. Fire shelters and that create better safety with our guys out there. Great cooperation between private citizens and government organizations. That's the way it works.
