As the story goes, prior to 1937 or so, grass, brush, and woods fires were battled by hand, with hose lines that could reach a fire from a road. The alternative was to use hand tools and pump cans, but this was only good for smaller fires.

     By 1937, vehicles had apparently become large enough and powerful enough to be enhanced with steel bars, sufficient size water tanks, and pumps to go off road and reach fires deeper in the woods than previously possible. By accessing fires quicker, while still small, they were able to reduce a great deal of danger and damage.

     The fire chief in Osterville, Bernard S. Ames also served as the forest fire warden (common in those days). He and some of the other men, including Carl Starck who owned the local garage, and others no doubt, got together and turned a 1937 Ford COE (Cab Over Engine) chassis into a vehicle that came to be known as a "Brush Breaker" by welding steel bars and chassis protection to a truck with a large (believed to be about 800 gallons) tank and a pump.

     The truck was not even finished according to stories, when it responded to its first fire, a large woods fire in Hyannis. The paint wasn't even dry, and surely no one had any experience driving it. The truck got caught in the fire and burned at the first fire it responded to. It was of course rebuilt and became an example from which other departments designed and built trucks for their own communities.

      There continued to be many, many wildland type fires over the years and a number of generations of brush breakers have come and gone over the years. Each generation brought new innovations and adapted to changing conditions. Teams of brush breakers working together on Cape Cod established what became a mutual aid system and helped reduce the damage done by large out of control fires.

      Brush breakers are designed to literally go off road, push over trees as needed, to enter a forest or wildland area to reach a fire and extinguish it while it is still small enough to put out. The alternative is to allow the fire to grow substantially larger as it burns and destroys until it eventually reaches homes or other populated areas. The innovation of this apparatus worked here on the Cape because of the terrain, type of forestation, and other factors somewhat unique to the area.

      Brush breakers are still in use today and while the larger fires have been less often, the potential for them continues to exist. New apparatus continues to be built in anticipation of future fires. These pages show the development and use of apparatus used in battling brush and forest fires around the Cape.