As part of our resource guardianship course and the second years junior manager course we cut fire breaks around the chalets and the Makhato houses. They started by doing the presentation for the Managers and then as soon as it was approved they gave the same one to us just to make sure we understood the reasoning behind, and the way we were going to go about it.
It comes down to this; it is winter, the grass is dry, and last but not least there are lots of very expensive assets that could be charred to crisps.
They established-by looking at the previous burns-where the hazards are and according to that they planned how the fire breaks must be cut.
We used: A tractor with a 3m slasher
another tractor with a 1.5m slasher ( both of which were driven by Sondela staff)
Pangas
Rakes
Forks
Weed eater
Brush cutters
Saws
Axes
We were also issued a pair of gloves each as part of the OHS procedures, as well as a pair of glasses per Weed eater and/or Brush cutter. We were also told to wear long pants and the correct shoes.
First the tractors would slash the grass and smaller bushes to make their job easier the brush cutters (with the blades) would cut the smaller trees that the tractor can't drive over. Then we would come and with the weed eaters cut the grass close to trees that they couldn't reach. We used the pangas axes and saws to clean the lower parts of the trees. The forks were used to move the branches we had cleaned of the trees onto heaps to be removed by the third tractor that had a trailer to take the greens to the compost heap.
