St. Clair residents might not know it, but there are around 1,000 fires in the county each year.

Most of those are handled by local fire stations. But for those that take place in rural areas or for ones that get to big for municipalities to handle, the task is left to the Forestry Commission stationed in Ashville.

Recently, the St. Clair County Commission purchased a new bulldozer that will be used for forestry firefighting and County Forestry Manager Derrick Heckman said that he is glad to have the state-of-the-art tool at their disposal.

The John Deere 650 bulldozer the County Commission purchased is an upgrade from the one previously used by the forestry commission and is the first of its kind to be used in Alabama.

It is outfitted with an enclosed, air-conditioned cabin that keeps the foresters able to do their job of digging fire lines in order to control the spread of fire. The cabin also has a double charcoal filtration system to keep smoke out of the cabin while it circulates fresh air.

“We’ve upgraded to a larger unit to better protect St. Clair County,” Heckman said.

He said that upgrading to the new dozer came at a time when the previous one might have started experiencing mechanical troubles; something that foresters do not need when fighting fires miles away from civilization.

The unit was purchased through the 10-cent-per-acre fire tax fund. “We’ve been saving that fund for going on ten years now,” Heckman said. “It’s not a lot of money. But it does put money into our budget that makes it available for us to purchase new and larger equipment. After saving that money for ten years now, the county commission was gracious enough to put it back in our fund and we were able this last year to make a bid on this unit and John Deere was gracious enough to cut us a heck of a deal on it.”

The unit was purchased last October and after being outfitted with the needed accessories, it arrived in late March.

Heckman said that the unit will be put on the fire line this fall. “Usually our fire seasons are spring and fall,” he said. “It wasn’t ready for the spring season. But as most people know, it rained nearly all this spring and we didn’t have a problem. But we’re expecting a good fall fire season so we’re expecting to see a lot of time and hours on it this fall. Normally we don’t fight but 100 to 200 fires during the year, so this will be able to effectively handle most of that.”

The other unit, which served its purpose for 18 years, will be sold as surplus. “It’s seen its last day,” Heckman said.

Fighting a rural forest fire isn’t the same as putting out one near a city or town. Most of the time, there is no water available, so digging fire lines is necessary.

“What we do is remove the fuel that is actually available to burn,” Heckman explained. “We take the bulldozer and remove all the fuel down to bare soil and a fire won’t burn dirt—if it does, then it makes glass, and it doesn’t get that hot—so the fire’s out once it burns to that edge. That’s how we [foresters] fight fires all across the United States in one form or another.”

Out west, forest fire fighting is often done by hand because of difficult terrain. But here in Alabama, the topography allows for bulldozers, which are more effective and much faster than shovels to be used when making fire lines.

The forestry commission also incorporates surplus military aircraft that are used for spotting fires. “About 75 percent of the time they tell us the way to get in [to a fire area] and the other 25 percent we figure out how to get into an area,” Heckman said.

The forestry commission has three members, but with one person on military duty serving their county since 2001, only Heckman and Ranger Technician Scott Sweatt are left to take care of duties for the county.

Contrary to what area residents might think, the forestry towers set up across the county are rarely used—if at all—in spotting fires. Instead, those towers have been re-tooled to relay Emergency Management Agency information.

But fires caused by lightning or other means aren’t the only ones the commission deals with.

The new purchase equipment will also be used for helping landowners with prescribed burning to help clear their land. “We’ll put in fire lanes for landowners at cost to the state—which is minimal—and they come out with a good deal while we get land prescribed burned, which is an asset to us.”

Bulldozers are tough machines that last a long time and as Heckman said, “Hopefully, in another in 20 years when I’m retired and gone, this unit will still be here and they can replace it again. A 20 year replacement schedule is not a bad replacement schedule.”

Heckman praised the County Commission for its efforts in helping to get the newest tools to the Forestry Commission, which also included getting a truck and trailer that will haul the machine to its locations around St. Clair County.

“This has been about four years in the making,” Heckman said standing next to the dozer. “It seemed like every time we thought we had enough money, well, the price of steel kept going up. So we kept trying to catch up with the price of steel and this thing is just a huge hunk of steel and our tax money stays the same every year; so we’ve been saving it and scrimping to try to get it bought.”

Heckman offered a friendly reminder to area residents. “Be careful with fire. We don’t need anybody helping us. We usually have enough fires that are caused by accidents. People still burn a lot of trash and brush piles in this county. We get enough fires from that to keep us plenty busy.”

Heckman also said that the forestry commission was “very, very thankful” for the municipalities that handle the other 90 percent of the brush and smaller forest fires in the county. “I can’t say enough good words about them. But for the 10 percent that they can’t handle, we’ve now got the official equipment that we can handle it without the fear of breaking down.”