By Sam Mclaughlin
The Arizona Daily Sun
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — Mike Orlando and his wife were not at home when a lightning strike started a small fire on their property deep in the forest west of Lake Mary Road two years ago. Their neighbors rushed to stop the flames from spreading, he recalled, but it wasn’t until the local fire district arrived about 45 minutes later that Orlando felt confident the situation was under control.
That experience led Orlando, a longtime welder and fabricator, to build his own version of what the firefighting industry calls a “fire skid”: a self-contained unit with a water tank, a pump and a hose, small enough to be transported in the back of a truck or pulled on a trailer.
“I designed it for our own purposes and folks like us,” he said. “Somebody that lives a little bit farther away from the fire department [...] just to give you a little bit of time before they get their act together and get out to you.”
The prototype drew enough interest from his neighbors, Orlando said, that he decided to start making them for sale, branded as “Backcountry Fire Equip.”
Fire skids of various sizes have been in use for a long time by wildland firefighters, often mounted on trucks, side-by-sides or other all-terrain vehicles.
Quite a few companies manufacture or sell versions of a fire skid. But Orlando believes the commercially available options aren’t well-suited to the needs of rural homeowners.
“There’s lots of professional units out there for the Forest Service and pro firefighters, but the price is pushing 20,000 bucks,” he said.
That cost is largely driven by features and certifications important to firefighters but not necessarily meaningful for a nonprofessional user.
His version starts at a price of $4,995, which puts it in line with other outdoor power equipment a rural property owner might consider.
“My mower is nice and all, but it ain’t gonna help me if the house is on fire,” Orlando joked.
For that price, the unit comes with a wraparound steel enclosure featuring forklift pockets on the bottom and lift points on the top in order to increase the number of potential ways to move it around; a 275-gallon water tank with an aluminum cover to prevent UV degradation; a 7-horsepower gasoline engine to provide pumping power; and a 50-foot long, 1-and-a half-inch diameter hose mounted on a spool.
It also comes with instructions printed in large font on a red panel attached to the tank — “because when you’re running around in a tizzy, sometimes the most obvious stuff, you forget,” Orlando said.
Orlando fabricates the enclosures and hose spools and assembles the units at his home. The powder-coating for the steel is done locally, by Dark Sky Powder Coating, and Orlando tries to source as many of the small parts as he can from Flagstaff suppliers.
With the water tank empty, the unit weighs just shy of 600 pounds. With a full tank, it’s about 2,800 pounds. It fits in the bed of a full-size pickup truck — though not all trucks will be able to haul it around when full.
Orlando is currently working on designs for trailer-wheel attachments that would allow the unit to be towed without the purchase of a separate trailer.
“I built the unit this way so it’s strong enough by itself to be the trailer,” he explained.
Deployment is intended to be fast and simple.
“If you can start a lawnmower, it’s within your capacity to use this thing for putting out a fire,” Orlando said.
To demonstrate, he unspooled the hose, started the engine with one yank on the pull-cord, and within seconds was spraying water.
The basic concept is not new. But Orlando’s take on the idea of a self-contained firefighting apparatus adds some refinements and versatility that may well appeal to rural residents.
“You know, years ago people used to have water trucks or a trailer with a tank on it or something, so this is just a new version of trying to fend for yourself until help gets out there,” he said.
Though primarily geared toward fire suppression, the unit can also be used for dust control on dirt roads with the addition of an optional spray-bar.
Orlando never planned to be in the fire skid business — “This was just something we tripped over,” he said — but he’s hopeful the project will fill a niche for people who share his do-it-yourself ethic and realistic appreciation of rural living.
“I think it makes a lot of sense,” he said.
‘It’s very dangerous’
To be clear, professional firefighters do not encourage homeowners to tackle fires themselves.
“Everybody out there working in fire suppression, we’re qualified to do that,” said Pedro Mungarro, deputy fire prevention officer for the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management (DFFM). “It’s very dangerous.”
Mungarro declined to discuss the idea of property owners acquiring their own fire skids. The most important things homeowners can do, he said, are to establish and maintain survivable space and complete home-hardening measures: “That’s the best way they can help us out.”
Together, those actions break the continuity of fuels around a home — making it less likely that an intense fire can get close — and reduce a home’s vulnerability to wind-borne embers, a frequent cause of ignitions.
These are also the actions recommended by the National Fire Protection Association’s “Firewise USA” program, in which DFFM and the Coconino National Forest both participate. Part of the program, Mungarro said, is educating people about what actions they should concentrate on.
“A lot of people look at the macro problem. And that’s what we try to steer away from in the class, and tell people to bring their focus back into their homes,” he explained.
It’s critical to complete that risk-reduction work ahead of fire season, and ahead of an actual fire, he stressed.
Firefighters are more likely to be able to protect a home if the area around it has been kept clear of excess or dead vegetation.
If that work has been done, Mungarro said, “We can use their property as a safe zone [...] or their home is a home that we can stand and defend.” But if the work hasn’t been completed and a fire is active, “it’s hard for us to go in there and try to clean up in 15 minutes,” he said.
That’s the official recommendation from fire managers: early and regular preventative action, from major tasks like removing branches that overhang a roof to mundane ones like cleaning gutters or raking under a deck. (“A lot of these are just simple tasks that you, yourself, as a homeowner can do,” Mungarro emphasized.)
Still, these recommendations might not satisfy everyone, particularly those for whom a fire department response will always and inevitably be somewhat delayed. Orlando’s fire skids are one more possible tool — albeit not an officially endorsed one — for people who want an extra line of defense during fire season.
“I would put it next to my house, honestly. Full, and just leave it there,” Orlando said.
Or he’d mount it on a trailer, he added, and give his neighbors the keys.
Would you want homeowners using skid units to try to knock down fires before crews arrive, or does that create more risk than it solves? How should departments handle situations where residents try to defend their own property?
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