Brian Rokos
The Press-Enterprise
(TNS)
These cats have serious fangs.
While the saviors of the biggest snowstorm to hit the San Bernardino Mountains in years have been the volunteers organizing food giveaways, and the emergency workers assisting trapped or ill residents and clearing roads, the mechanical heroes have been the San Bernardino County Fire Department’s snowcats.
These go-everywhere vehicles that ride on tank tracks answered hundreds of the 1,500 calls for firefighters’ help during the height of the storm, including 12 fires, lugging firefighters, paramedic and rescue equipment as well as fire hoses and nozzles when there were no other means to reach homes and businesses.
The powerful snowcats roll over deep snow and up and down berms at steep angles.
“You’re not limited to roads,” said Capt. Don Whitesell, who has operated snowcats for 20 years. “You can actually veer off-road cross country, you can get into some places that maybe the road wouldn’t be passable, maybe there are trees down, lines down. You can create your own road along the way.”
The versatility means the snowcat crews don’t have to wait for a plow to clear the roads.
“We have yet to have someone call 911 and we have not been able to get to them, and that is thanks in no small part to the snowcats,” said Eric Sherwin, a county fire spokesman.
Whitesell has seen firsthand the reactions of those who have been rescued.
“Most of them were amazed that we were able to get to them. For a lot of people, it was a last-ditch effort to try to get rescued. They didn’t know how it was going to happen,” Whitesell said. “There was a feeling of defeat and hopelessness until we rolled up. Their demeanor changed because they realized they were not abandoned, they were not alone.”
Friday’s storm brought rain to all but the highest elevations, and next week’s system is forecast for more of the same, so the county is transitioning to the more typical response of sending fire engines to calls. But the snowcats are still being used to access backcountry areas such as campgrounds and off-road areas where fun-seekers get stuck in snow, Sherwin said.
The county’s fleet of eight snowcats is housed at fire stations from Wrightwood to Forest Falls. There is room for two people in the cab and 10 in the bay, including patients on stretchers. They don’t have water pumps but can get closer to burning buildings than fire engines and hook up their hoses to the engines’ water supply. The snowcats are equipped with 10-foot-wide plows. Each vehicle costs around $100,000.
Firefighters train for a minimum of 20 hours on the snowcats, first on roads and then on more difficult terrain. Some operators have logged hundreds of hours behind the wheel, which resembles a video game control. The snowcats can travel up to about 25 mph and turn on a dime by braking one track and engaging the other.
Although the snowcats weigh more than five tons, they don’t sink in the snow because the wide tracks displace the weight over a large footprint, Sherwin said.
“Probably one of the coolest pieces of equipment to drive,” Whitesell said, “because it makes access in some very difficult areas that we normally wouldn’t be able to get to. It’s something we don’t get to do every day and when we do operate them, it’s usually because of extreme need.”
Plus, Whitesell acknowledged, it’s fun.
“The crazier, the more mechanical, the better. This is right up my alley. As soon as I got into this field, one of the nice things about being in this division, we have a lot of things like this we operate in some extreme environments,” he said.
Those include fire boats on the lakes and rivers and all-terrain vehicles for the mountains and deserts. Whitesell has operate