Our Vision

Wildland Fire Hydrants WLFH, began in 2018 after a conversation regarding water pumps resulted in the Owner Lenny, signing up with the USFS in the Pacific Northwest Region 6 as an Emergency Equipment Rental Agreement-EERA Vendor supplying Overhead Fill Towers. That July the first fire call was received to the South Umpqua Complex incident in Southern Oregon. The experience demonstrated to Lenny that even though his capabilities were significant, averaging 6-8 fills per hour, it lacked the ability to significantly reduce the wait line of the water tenders waiting to fill their water tanks especially during a rush when it would take over two hours to fill the last vehicle in line. There had to be a better way.

In 2019 WLFH was involved in an incident where 3 Fill Spots were set up together, two government pumps and a WLFH setup. It was on this Incident where Lenny realized, while watching the traffic flow in and out of the area that even with multiple filling spots the line of vehicles waiting to fill was lengthy. There had to be a better way, then he envisioned how a single system would not only collectively out perform these individual setups, but be capable of going far beyond that.

In 2020 a rough prototype of the idea Lenny envisioned was being put through testing, and over the next two years the idea refined into a capability capable of reducing the average 3000 gallon water tender fill time of 15-20 minutes down to as low as 3-4 minutes, potentially less

In 2022 WLFH was called to an Incident where the Fire Management Team was from the Great Basin Region. After the Incident Lenny reached out to Chief Jackson regarding the system Lenny had put together, explaining the capabilities, how it operated and what it could potentially do.

In 2023 WLFH signed up to work in the Great Basin Region and had the opportunity to demonstrate the modest capability at the Hayden Creek incident in Idaho with a pair of 1160 GPM Tender Filling Stations. Lenny was thrilled to finally see what he had envisioned finally in action. The 1160 system was able to reduce the morning rush from a two hour choke point to a less than an hour operation that led to an overall substantial increase in the water tanked vehicles efficiencies that “exceeded expectations, can’t say you made each water tender like two, but you could probably say you made each one like one and a half.” 

Afterwards, Lenny wanted to kick himself for not setting up a larger GPM configuration, to get a look at the capabilities that await…..maybe next year!