Flying

Fighting Wildfires with Aircraft

By Blair Watson, Special to Aviation.com

posted: 14 August 2008 03:31 pm ET

: The 1969-vintage Canadair CL-215 amphibious aircraft and its successors the CL-215T, CL-415 and Bombardier 415MP represent perhaps the only family of dedicated firefighting aircraft to be designed in modern times. The CL-215/415's specialized features and excellent waterbombing performance have allowed Canadair and successor company Bombardier to sell fleets to firefighting agencies all over the world for nearly four decades. Credit: Bombardier Aerospace
: Aero Union operates 8 ex-U.S. Navy Lockheed P-3 Orions on contract with the United States Forest Service (USFS), introducing the four-engine turboprop into the USFS firefighting fleet in 1990 with two aircraft. At present Aero Union is the only commercial P-3 operator in the world. Over the past 13 years its P-3s have averaged 1,672 flight hours on forest fires, flying 2,119 flights and dropping 5,462,800 gallons of retardant annually. Aero Union's P-3 fleet has maintained a remarkable availability rate of 99.56 percent in accomplishing this tough flying. The aircraft can be dispatched anywhere in the United States, except Hawaii, at any time during their contract period. The fire season typically begins in the Southeastern U.S. in March, moves to the Southwest in early May, transfers to the West and Northwest in July and concludes in Southern California in December. Orion flight crews work 6-day work weeks with the normal crew day ranging from a minimum of 9 hours to a maximum of 14 hours. Flight hours are restricted to a maximum of 8 hours per day and 42 hours per week. The company's two vacation relief crews provide breaks for its contract crews for a two-week period every two months. Credit: Aero Union
: Many of the airtankers in today's U.S. firefighting fleet are converted 1950s-era aircraft, such as this ex-U.S. Navy Grumman S-2T Tracker operated by CAL FIRE. Although it promised to provide modern firefighting airtankers by 2007, the U.S. federal government has not yet done so. Credit: CAL FIRE
: Kern County Fire Department in Southern California operates this Bell 205 helicopter as a firefighting waterbomber. Credit: Kern County Fire Department

On June 20, a violent storm crossed northern California and the border regions of Oregon and Nevada, producing some 8,000 lightning strikes and starting more than 2,000 wildfires on local, state and federal land.

The coverage area, duration and intensity of the storm were “unprecedented,” said Ruben Grijalva, Chief Director of CAL FIRE, the state’s largest fire department.

In CAL FIRE’s jurisdiction, more than 1,000 wildfires simultaneously raged out of control. CAL FIRE worked with the United States Forest Service (USFS), other federal agencies and local fire departments to battle the wildfires, which threatened nearly 20,000 structures and forced the evacuation of thousands of people.

Aircraft played a key role in fighting the California wildfires in June and July, as well as new fires that started subsequently as the California wildfire season gained momentum. (The season can extend almost throughout the entire year, according to firefighters.) CAL FIRE had to modify its usual strategies for combating fires to maximize the effectiveness of the firefighting resources available.

Modifying the firefighting strategy

“During normal wildland firefighting, it is our practice and strategy to send an aggressive initial attack, including fire engines, bulldozers, aircraft, hand crews and fire ground commanders to a wildfire to keep fires small," explained Grijalva.

"This has successfully allowed us to keep approximately 95 percent of all wildfires within our jurisdiction to 10 acres or less. However, fighting this vast number of lightning-caused fires required firefighters to employ a different play book, because it was not business as usual," he continued.

"Fires were grouped by geographic areas and each area’s incident commander was allocated resources based on the greatest threat to life, property, and natural resources as determined by a California Multi-Agency Coordination system, which is composed of fire experts from local, state, and federal agencies,” said Grijalva.

Tragically, the intensive aerial firefighting efforts in Northern California produced a terrible accident on Aug. 5. A Sikorsky S-61N Fire King ferrying 10 firefighters and a USFS employee back to camp from the northern end of a large fire in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest crashed just after takeoff, killing seven firefighters, one of the two pilots on board and the USFS staffer, in one of the worst wildland firefighting incidents for 30 years.

Many different aircraft used

“Wildland fire aviation includes a variety of aircraft and operations," the Boise, Idaho-based National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) said on its Web site. "Helicopters are used to drop water, transport crews, (for) reconnaissance, infrared (imaging), and deliver resources to the fireline. Fixed-wing aircraft include smokejumper aircraft, air tactical platforms, Single Engine Airtankers (SEATs), large airtankers, and large transport aircraft.”

With approximately 40 million acres of forestland, California has more firefighting aircraft than any other state. The fleet is comprised of 23 Grumman S-2T airtankers, 11 UH-1H Super Huey helicopters and 14 OV-10A air tactical airplanes, the OV-10As being used to conduct an initial survey of the fire and direct firefighting activities.

Military C-130 Hercules transport airplanes equipped with the Modular Airborne Firefighting System — a five-tank, 2,700-gallon system loaded into the cargo bay — assisted extensively with the aerial firefighting in California. Navy Reserve and Marine aircrew also flew support missions and NASA provided access to satellite information and reconnaissance from its Ikhana unmanned aerial vehicle.

Airtankers owned by private companies contracted by state and federal governments to conduct aerial firefighting include former naval Grumman S-2 Trackers, Lockheed P-2V Neptunes and Lockheed P-3 Orions (the big Orions modified to carry 6,000 gallons of water mixed with powdered fire retardant), as well as Canadair CL-215 waterbombers.

The CL-215 is a purpose-built amphibious aircraft that scoops up water when it lands on lakes, rivers or the sea. Bombardier, which bought Canadair, developed the original 1969-vintage CL-215 design into the turboprop-powered Bombardier 415 and 415MP, which it still makes and sells to firefighting agencies in countries all over the world.

A popular SEAT is the AT-802F, the firefighting version of an agricultural aircraft made by Air Tractor, Inc. of Olney, Texas. The AT-802F, a turboprop airplane, can be fitted with amphibious floats and can scoop up 820 gallons of water in 30 seconds.

Where are the replacement airtankers?

Rose Davis, a USFS Fire & Aviation Management public affairs specialist, explained in a May 2004 article in Fire Chief magazine that the national large tanker fleet consisted of “only” 33 airplanes and that “thousands of wildfires” were being fought each year without airtanker support.

There are 21 large tankers deployed throughout the country to combat wildfires, according to NIFC’s 2008 Federal Contract Airtanker List. However, when contacted recently, the NIFC public affairs officer amended the size of the fleet to 19 airplanes, a 42 percent reduction from four years ago.

“Modernization of the airtanker fleet will take significant funding," the USFS said in a 2008 System Safety Assessment document. "As new equipment is brought into the mix of aircraft, unplanned events are inevitable. The agency does not have the skill mix to oversee flight testing and development in house.”

Two years ago, Colorado congressmen Mark Udall and John Salazar were told by the Undersecretary of Agriculture and Natural Resources that a new plan to modernize the airtanker fleet would be produced by the spring of 2007. To date, no such plan has been released by the federal department.