Pumps, hose and sprinklers were shuttled off the Rice Ridge and Liberty Fires by the truckload this past week. Crews at the Rice Ridge Incident Command Post sorted equipment, re-rolled the hose and loaded it on palettes for the Missoula Fire Cache.
Soldiers with the Montana Army National Guard 484th Military Policy Company, headquartered in Malta with detachments in Glasgow and Billings, helping sort and roll hose from the Rice Ridge Fire. As of Friday, Sept. 15, there were 86 National Guard soldiers on the Rice Ridge Fire. The National Guard was released from the fire on Monday.
SEELEY LAKE – The Rice Ridge Fire rehabbing process began Thursday. Firefighting crews started wrapping up 135 miles of hose, collecting the 224 pumps and 1094 sprinkler heads and collapsing the large orange portable tanks called pumpkins. Montana National Guard units helped with roadblocks and also were put to work shuttling the equipment to the Incident Command Post south of Seeley Lake and rolling the hose.
This season the Missoula Fire Cache has sent out more than 900 miles of hose to fires around the state. All the hose is rolled in 50-foot or 100-foot sections. When the cache receives the hose from the various fires, it is cleaned, pressure-tested and rerolled to be used again next year. Everything from the individual brass sprinkler heads to the pumps are accounted for.
Firefighters started draining the pumpkins and port-a-tanks and moving the structure protection equipment to centralized locations Thursday, Sept. 14. The Montana National Guard picked up the equipment and brought it back to the main camp from both the Rice Ridge Fire and the east side of the Liberty Fire since Greg Poncin's Type 1 Incident Management Team is in charge of both.
As of Monday night less than a mile of hose and only 20 pumps were left on the Rice Ridge fire line.
Camp crews from Mammoth Cave, in south central Kentucky, and the Nez Perce organized the equipment and cut off hose ends that were destroyed. Guard members rolled the good hoses and stacked them on pallets for shipping back to the cache.
Public Information Officer Mike Cole said there was $3.6 million of firefighting equipment on the Rice Ridge Fire. It was all purchased with taxpayer dollars and the fire is accountable to the Missoula Fire Cache for every piece, from every sprinkler head to every pump.
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