Aircraft douse blazes, ease task for ground crews

SACRAMENTO, CA, UNITED STATES

07.11.2008

Story by Staff Sgt. Jill Jamgochian 

129th Rescue Wing

Staff Sgt. Jill Jamgochian
129th Rescue Wing

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - National Guard and Air Force Reserve aircrews are busy coordinating ongoing fire containment efforts with civilian firefighting agencies in an effort to lay thousands of gallons of water and fire retardant across thousands of acres of land in Northern California to make life a little easier for ground crews digging fire lines.

Eight Air National Guard and Reserve C-130H Hercules from Colorado, Wyoming and North Carolina have been equipped with Modular Airborne Fire Fighting Systems, each comprised of five pressurized tanks and two 18-inch discharge tubes, which can hold and disperse 3,000 gallons of retardant. The sticky retardant is designed to smother vegetation and slow the advance of the fire, allowing ground crews more opportunity to dig fire containment lines, said Stephen Jones, a deputy chief with Cal Fire.

"We drop the retardant on live trees and live bushes before they burn," said Lt. Col. David Banker, aircraft commander from the AF Reserve's 302nd Airlift Wing in Colorado Springs. "The C-130s are guided into the drop site by a lead plane operated by representatives from either Cal Fire, Bureau of Land Management or the U.S. Forest Service."

Twenty-two National Guard rotary-wing aircraft from nine different states are also working with civilian agencies to conduct fire suppression missions and determine where drops will be most beneficial to ground crews. Since the effort began June 22, Guard units supporting the effort have dropped more than 2.2 million gallons of water.

"We provide support to the bulldozer teams and hand crews on the ground," said Capt. Dave Steffen, an air operations crew chief from Orange County Fire Authority, and assigned to manage the water bucket mission on a UH-60 Black Hawk with an Idaho Army National Guard aircrew since early July. "We do put out a lot of the fire, but we don't consider it contained until the hand crews dig lines. If we can cool it down for them it helps out a lot."

Bulldozers and hand crews cut into the mineral earth to create vegetation-absent paths, eliminating 'fuel' for the flames to harvest and burn, therefore ceasing the fires' progression. The water and fire retardant drops provide moisture and an extra layer to keep the fires from spreading.

National Guard helicopters are equipped with large, open buckets made of pliable material able to carry 530 gallons of water per load. Each Black Hawk averages 40 to 60 drops daily, depending on their distance from the water dip site, said 1st Sgt. Dave Berlinguet, a flight engineer from the 1-183rd Aviation Battalion in Boise, Idaho.

"The helicopter crews are partnered with a local fire agency aircrew manager, and then they get assigned to one of the 19 fire complexes in Northern California," Jones said.

"A fire complex is comprised of multiple fires, small and large, and its area is defined by Cal Fire."

He added because there are so many fires, each complex supports multiple fire sites. In fact, the Boise team is one of the five aircrews drenching the Lightning Complex, comprised of 58 fires in a 58,000-acre complex in Shasta and Trinity counties.

"The Motion fire (in the Lightning Complex) has five Black Hawks working a daisy chain meaning they follow suit, hovering over the dip site, filling the bucket, and then taking off to start the pattern all over again," he said. "The process takes three minutes."

Each agency, civilian and military, depends on each others' knowledge and resources in order to sustain the fires which have burned more than 688,000 acres. On July 1, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered the California National Guard to provide direct ground support to help Cal Fire create containment lines in order to keep the blazes at bay. Then on July 11, the California governor requested 2,000 additional Guardsmen to prepare for the threat of additional fires over the next few months.

Team Dozer, comprised of eight D7 bulldozers and 37 Soldiers from the 649th Engineer Battalion, based out of Chico, Calif., are currently supporting efforts to contain the Gap fire in Goleta, Calif., by building fire containment lines there. They were activated at the end of June along with 200 California Army National Guardmembers to work on hand crews known as Task Force Axe. The second wave of 200 linesmen, referred to as Task Force Pick, began training July 9 and will see action on the fire line in the coming days.

"It's hard work to get to the fires in so many places at the same time," said Jones. "Dry lightning storms in late June created more than 1,700 different fires."

The multiple starts were beyond our resources, he continued. "Cal Fire aircraft are intended for initial response, and it quickly became evident this was beyond the abilities of our existing resources."

Jones added he anticipates the operation to contain the fires will go well into August.

• Date Taken: 07.11.2008
• Date Posted: 07.14.2008 16:11
• Story ID: 21484
• Location: SACRAMENTO, CA, US