For the first year, the Sedona Fire District has outfitted their rescue utility task vehicles with snow equipment.
“It’s a 2021 Can-Am HD10 model … and they kind of customize it to our needs,” Sedona Fire District Battalion Chief Jordan Baker said. “So what we do with that is during Dec. 1 through March 1, we will outfit it with those snow track systems, which allows us access to a lot of the super terrain, driveway topography.”
According to Baker, who heads up the district’s special operations unit, SFD has four total off-roading vehicles. Two of the UTVs have been in the district for the past seven years, while the newer snow-equipped vehicles arrived this past October. When the two new vehicles have the snow tracks, the UTVs can travel upwards of 40 to 45 miles per hour in winter weather conditions. It also has an enclosed heated cab as a SFD staff safety measure.
“It will be for all of our staff, once they complete a recreational off-road vehicle course that we have,” Baker said. “Two to three instructors at the Sedona Fire District put it on once every three years for our operational staff. They have to go through and get certified to be able to operate those units in district and out of district.”
The certification requires a one-day class that then brings the staff out to operate the vehicles in difficult terrain, such as areas out near Broken Arrow.
And the UTVs are not just for snow conditions. The two previous vehicles were used for summer month recreational rescues, as well as wildfire rescues. When used in the summer, the “[This] past Sunday, we had a pretty significant rescue assignment off the end of Soldier Pass with a climber who fell 15 to 20 feet,” Baker said. “We utilized Trail Rescue 541, one of our original UTVs, to access our place crews further in on Soldier Pass. This significantly decreases our response time to patient access.”
Predominantly SFD is called out for vehicle rollovers around the Devil’s Bridge, Vultee Arch and Dry Creek areas. And although this is the first year that SFD used the snow-equipped vehicles, crews have already responded to calls over the few snowfalls in the past few weeks. Oak Creek Canyon is one of the main locations for snowbound rescues and snowfall two weeks ago proved this to be true again.
“We had an incident up in Oak Creek Canyon with that little snowstorm that moved through where we actually had some slide off and people hitting the guardrails,” Baker said. “And we also had a vehicle-versus-pedestrian accident up there at the same time. So we utilized that pro-rescue to cruise from station four into that scene quickly to be able to assist with manpower and securing that incident.”
The vehicles will be paid for by summer rescue missions for out-of-district wildfires, which other states and districts pay to use. According to SFD, the newer UTVs will be paid for in just two or three of the 14-day assignments that the district will lease them for the summer.
The UTVs are located around the district, mainly at Station 1 for Dry Creek area accidents and Station 4 for UTVs have full rollover protection.
