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Swampers Patrick Garcia, from left, Eric Tindle and dozer operators Joey Mader and Ryan Monteleone make up the two two-man dozer crews for the Orange County Fire Authority. The operators pilot the dozers and the swampers serve as guides. They plow through vegetation to cut the source of fuel during a wildfire at a rate much faster than fire crews and make a huge impact in fighting fires.

Dozer operators Ryan Monteleone walks by a dozer on a trailer bed. The Orange County Fire Authority's dozer operating crew makes a huge impact on fire suppression.

Dozer operator Ryan Monteleone sits inside a dozer kept at Fire Station 47 in Irvine. The Orange County Fire Authority's dozer operating crew makes a huge impact on fire suppression. They plow through vegetation to cut the source of fuel during a wildfire at a rate much faster than fire crews.

A dozer is put pack on its trailer in Yorba Linda.

Dozer operator Joey Mader from OC Fire Station 53 pilots a dozer in Yorba Linda.

Firefighter Donovan George, from left, firefighter paramedic Rodrigo Costa, dozer operator Ryan Monteleone and swamper Patrick Garcia are seen last week with a dozer at Station 47 in Irvine.

A bulldozer cuts a line behind a wall of fire as wildland firefighters battle a brushfire in Coto de Caza in June.

Before he could off-load his bulldozer, the wildfire’s flames rushed up to greet him.

Erratic winds fed the flames. Air currents carried embers in all directions. It was Joey Mader’s job to plow into the fiery brush and deny the blaze its fuel.

Ten years ago, that Sawtooth fire in San Bernardino County gobbled up 67,000 acres, 58 homes and 200 vehicles, and killed a resident.

“Every place you looked, there was just fire coming,” the firefighter said.

At any moment, Mader, now 51, can end up in that same orange inferno.

Of the Orange County Fire Authority’s 1,400 firefighters, Mader and Ryan Monteleone, 41, are the lone bulldozer operators. In California, there are an estimated 200 such sworn firefighters assigned to plowing through flames, brush and trees.

Just weeks into California’s six-month wildfire season, sharpened by the drought, each could be dispatched at any moment to a brusher or to a wildfire so massive it draws firefighters from around the state.

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The pair are plopped into great peril. But the payoff is plentiful.

A dozer, in three minutes, clears the same amount of vegetation it takes a 20-person hand crew an hour to rip out, explained Larry Kurtz, a captain with the Orange County Fire Authority. And bulldozers create clearings where firefighters can huddle for safety.

“Without their assistance, fires would extend to much greater parameters,” the captain said.

Smoke, dust and darkness of night obscure visibility. Water drops create a muddy film on the bulldozers’ windows. Fire retardant cascading from the sky can temporarily color the yellow bulldozers crimson.

“It sounds like the windows are going to blow out,” Monteleone said.

Dozers weigh 30 tons. Silt and slate can send them sliding about as if on ice.

When fire threatens to race over them – a “burn over,” in firefighter parlance – the men unfurl thick, reflective curtains down over the dozer’s windows.

This cocoon buys time, keeping the temperatures lower, which even with air-conditioned cabins can still reach 170 degrees Fahrenheit, until the operator can trundle to a fire-free refuge.

“You have to have some sort of exit strategy at all times,” Monteleone said. “You always know, ‘I have enough time to get back here if I need to.’ Get back to the black.”

The black is the charred land that the fire has already passed over.

“It’s been so hot my eyes water and it’s hard to breathe,” said Scott Price, president of the California Dozer Operators Group, an organization for special bulldozer operators to share safety and other tips. “It can get miserable. That’s the time you need to back off.”

During massive, multi-agency fires, dozer operators, like hand crews, can work 12 to 24 hours. They eat Meals Ready-to-Eat – the emergency food soldiers rely on.

There are two ways to attack a fire with a bulldozer.

The first is to drive the blade up to 1 foot into the ground, directly uprooting vegetation, denying the flames their fuel. Even below-ground roots burn.

The other is based on winds and topography, moving the machinery to where the fire will likely spread and cutting it off by creating dirt swaths.

Dozer operators typically sit 8 feet above ground, rolling four to six miles per hour – if that – with up to 100 gallons of fuel in the tanks.

With limited visibility, the operators guide their equipment by feel as much as by vision.

“I have more of a fear of rolling off a hill at night then I do of pushing up against fire,” Mader said. “The fire I can see, and I get what’s going on.

“At night, you’re going down this virgin soil, down these ridges, and it’s rocky and dusty and you just hope there’s a bottom to this, and not a drop off.”

In 2007, Matt Will, 30, with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and fighting the Colorado fire near Monterey, was crushed when his dozer plummeted 150 feet from a cliff.

The dozer operators’ best line of defense is their swampers. Not all agencies deploy them, but the Orange County Fire Authority does.

Eric Tindle is Mader’s swamper – a sworn firefighter who walks near the dozer, scouting out where the mass of machinery should go – and where it shouldn’t.

Patrick Garcia is Monteleone’s, his bird dog guiding him via radios, or hand signals when visibility is clear.

Sometimes the swampers drive ahead in their “tenders,” small pickups packed with extra fuel, spare parts and hand tools. Usually the swampers park them and just walk ahead.

“His job is basically to keep me safe,” Monteleone said of his partner. “He’s my eyes out there.”

Garcia, and Tindle, watch out for hand crew members, abandoned mine shafts, the fire’s behavior, and cliffs obscured by flames, smoke and dust.

“If there’s something I see that he doesn’t maybe, I’ll let him know,” Garcia said.

Together, Mader and Monteleone have 49 years of experience and, separately, have fought hundreds of fires, from Mexico to Canada, transporting their bulldozers to the fire front lines themselves.

Besides wildfires, the two respond to large dump fires, extricate vehicles stuck in the back country and create the beach berms in Seal Beach each winter that protect against flooding. They also maintain fire roads.

Monteleone, the married father of four boys, spends several days each week living at Station 47 in Irvine, strategically placed so he can quickly get to South County brush fires.

Married, Mader is a father of five grown sons and a grandfather to six. He is based at Station 53 in Yorba Linda. He pilots the Fire Authority’s newest dozer, purchased in 2008 for $350,000 with its bells and whistles.

At age 4, Mader would drive his firefighter peddle car across the street to a fire station and ride about in its bay. In second grade, firefighters visited his class, handed out those plastic red helmets and something clicked.

“We all laugh that this is where I was supposed to be,” Mader said and then grew pensive: “It’s very satisfying when you see you stopped a fire that was heading toward changing the lives of people.”

When each shows up to work, neither knows when he will go home.

On Monteleone’s first day with the Fire Authority last August, Mader shook his hand, welcomed him to the team and was dispatched to Northern California to help with lightning wildfires.

Monteleone didn’t go home that night as expected – with Mader gone, he needed to stay on duty in case a wildfire broke out here.

“I told my wife I would be home at 5,” he recalled, “and I didn’t come home for 27 days.”

Contact the writer: lwilliams@ocregister.com

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