Monday, October 5, 2026 Fire Mitigation Day 1
This is the Giant G1200HD Tele tree handler. It won’t be used much today, because they are starting at the south and working their way around the east from south to north. All of these areas are too steep for the Giant, so the trees have to handled by just the winch, which is very slow.
This weighs 2,750 pounds and has a 25 HP Kutota diesel engine. Even the wheels are driven by hydraulic motors, which allows them to be electronically controlled so they don’t slip.
Here’s a tree being felled. It did not want to fall to the right, the wedges couldn’t be set deep enough, so they just pushed it the way it needed to go.
Dragging the first tree to the chipper. They started out dragging two trees, but had to clear another one out of the way first.
Here’s the two trees they started dragging coming up, now that the way is clear.
The safety ring on the chipper didn’t want to move to the operate position, but it was finally pushed there and WOW! The tree started into the chipper at 54 seconds and was finished at 1:45, 51 seconds.
One more up and into the chipper.
Yipes! Right at the start, the winch cable breaks. Its a Samson AmSteel-Blue, 5/16 rope, with a minimum breaking strength of 12,300 pounds when new. This was aged, so it broke at less than than that.