Tag Archives: night flying

CAL FIRE installing hoists on helicopters

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Fighting wildland fires can be a dangerous job. One of the most difficult challenges is providing treatment to an injured firefighter during that first “golden hour” if an accident occurs in a remote location.

The California Department of Forestry & Fire Protection is taking a step to speed the transfer of a patient from the fireline to a hospital by installing hoist systems on their 11 firefighting helicopters. They recently completed the first round of training on the new systems at the CAL FIRE academy at Ione. Some of the hoists have already been installed and all 11 should be ready to go by the end of the year.

This is a great step in the right direction and may save firefighters’ lives if they suffer an injury during daylight hours.

Currently there are no CAL FIRE or U.S. Forest Service helicopters that can fly at night. The USFS is going to tip toe into night flying operations again next year by contracting for one helicopter with that capability. It is unknown if it will have a hoist.

The USFS was criticized for not taking advantage of the Los Angeles County Fire Department’s night flying helicopters during the first night after the Station Fire started near Los Angeles in 2009. The fire was three to four acres at 7 a.m. on the second day, but no helicopters were used the first night. The fire took off at mid-morning on day two and later burned 160,000 acres, killing two firefighters.

There were accusations that the USFS employed a less than aggressive attack on the Station fire in an effort to save money. If that was their strategy, it failed. A GAO review estimated the cost of suppressing the Station Fire to be $93 million, placing it among the most costly fires in the nation’s history. This does not include the costs of rebuilding the 89 homes that burned in the fire which may have been another $15 to $35 million.
Thanks go out to Eric

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Saturday one-liners, August 25, 2012

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Cygnet Fire in Yellowstone NP

Cygnet Fire in Yellowstone NP, August 24, 2012 Photo by Yellowtone National Park

The Cygnet Fire in Yellowstone National Park, 5 miles southeast of Norris Junction, experienced some growth and produced an impressive smoke column most of the day Friday. The estimated size earlier today was 750 acres. A Red Flag warning is in effect on Saturday until 9 p.m.

10 Tanker Air Carrier, which operates the two DC-10 air tankers, sent this via their @10Tanker Twitter account today:

Approaching 1 million gallons dropped on CA fires since arriving at MCC 8 days ago.

Two cousins who started the Wallow fire which became the largest fire in the history of Arizona, were convicted and sentenced to two days in jail.

If you are interested in firefighting helicopters, check out this excellent update on the status of the privately-owned helicopter providers.

A man convicted of burning down his own house may have committed suicide in the courtroom seconds after hearing the verdict.

A commission is looking into the Lower North Fork prescribed fire southwest of Denver which escaped on March 26, 2012 and burned 4,140 acres, killed 3 people, and burned 23 homes. Our earlier reports on the fire can be found here.

On August 16 we wrote about the US Forest Service’s plan to add one night-flying helicopter next year. Here is the PE Enterprise’s view on the subject.
Thanks go out to LM, Gary, Kelly, and Mark

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Injured firefighter rescued by night-flying helicopter

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Saturday night, August 11, an injured firefighter was rescued by firefighters on the ground and a night-flying helicopter on the Ramsey fire on the Stanislaus National Forest eight miles east of Dorrington, California. The U.S. Forest Service will not have night-flying ability until one helicopter comes on board with those capabilities in 2013, but thankfully a Firehawk from Los Angeles County Fire Department was dispatched to hoist the firefighter out of an active fire area.

Here is an excerpt from a very interesting article in the Calaveras Enterprise:

…A large opening was made in the trees by a hot shot team to make room for the helicopter evacuation.

“When the helicopter came in for the rescue, the rotor wash was the biggest concern – stoking fires and kicking up ash and (burning) debris,” Jacobus said. “That was probably the biggest hardship for us to contend with.”

The copter first came in at 4:30 a.m. in the dark and dropped a rescuer to brief the ground team on how the helicopter crew wanted the patient packaged.

“They brought the helicopter in a second time for raise and evacuation,” Jacobus said. “We dealt with some pretty extreme rotor wash both times. It’s like being in the beginning part of a hurricane, but instead of blowing air, it’s blowing hot ash and churning sparks at you.”

We have written many times before about how important it is for a seriously injured firefighter to receive appropriate medical treatment in the “golden hour”. Night-flying helicopters can be very useful for slowing fires at night even more effectively than during the day. But they can also save lives, especially if they have hoist capabilities.

The right thing for the wildland fire agencies to do, is to have multiple night-flying capable helicopters, with hoists, if they are going to fight fire at night in remote areas. In addition, they should have hoist-capable helicopters available during daylight hours, if they are going to fight fire in remote areas (which include, what, 75 percent of the wildland fires that the federal agencies fight?). It is a health and safety issue, not a luxury. I am surprised that OSHA has not cited the wildland fire agencies for their failure to provide this capability. And it is not just the U.S. Forest Service that should be under the gun here. Let’s not leave out the National Park Service, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Bureau of Land Management, as well as state agencies.

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USFS to use one night-flying helicopter next year

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Water drop on Eagle fire

A helicopter drops water on the Eagle fire in southern California, July 27, 2011. Photo by Lone Ranger.

The U.S. Forest Service has reversed course and decided to contract for one firefighting helicopter that can fly at night, becoming mission-capable in 2013. The helicopter, which will be based in southern California, will support wildfire suppression on Forest Service-protected lands within and adjacent to the Angeles, Cleveland, and San Bernardino National Forests, and the southern half of the Los Padres National Forest.

It has been years since the USFS had that capability. In 1977 a USFS helicopter and a Los Angeles county helicopter operating at night collided, killing one pilot and injuring another. Sometime after that the USFS abandoned night flying.

The USFS was criticized for attacking the 2009 Station fire near Los Angeles on the first night and the morning of the second day with strategy and tactics that were less than aggressive. The fire was three to four acres at 7 a.m. on the second day, but no air tankers or helicopters were used the first night or until later in the morning on the second day. The fire took off at mid-morning on day two and later burned 160,000 acres and killed two firefighters. Night-flying helicopters operated by Los Angeles County were not used the first night on the fire.

After the Station fire several politicians became involved in the controversy and pressured the USFS to restore the capability to use helicopters at night to drop water. The agency said they have been studying the concept, again, and announced today that they would tip-toe back into night flying, with a single helicopter in 2013.

The USFS is the lead federal agency managing the fixed-wing air tanker program, which has withered away from the 44 exclusive use large air tankers we had in 2002 to the 9 we have today. Air tankers and helicopters do not put out fires, but under the right conditions they can slow the fire enough to allow ground-based firefighters the opportunity to suppress it.

In our opinion, the U.S. Forest Service’s Fire and Aviation Management program is not  aggressively attacking emerging fires, adapting to changing conditions, or effectively managing the aerial firefighting program. Some of this can be attributed to declining firefighting budgets that are requested by the administration, approved or modified by Congress, and signed by the President.

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Night-flying poll

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The recent announcement by Tom Harbor of the U.S. Forest Service that they will consider re-establishing a night-flying program for firefighting helicopters brings to mind last year when we took up the issue here. At that time the topic was being discussed because the San Diego County Board of Supervisors was considering night-flying for their fire helicopters. In July of 2008 Wildfire Today conducted a poll, asking:

“Should helicopters fight fire at night?”

At the close of the poll 231 people had voted. The results were:

Yes: 39.8%

No: 51.9%

Don’t Know: 8.2%

Poll helicopters night flying July 2008

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USFS considers night-flying helicopters

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A Los Angeles County fire helicopter does a drop over a hotspot in Rancho Palos Verdes on Aug. 28, 2009. (Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press)

A Los Angeles County fire helicopter does a drop over a hotspot in Rancho Palos Verdes on Aug. 28, 2009. (Mark J. Terrill)

(updated @ 12:12 p.m. MT, Dec. 1)

The U. S. Forest Service, apparently in response to criticism  from the Los Angeles County Fire Department and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, is again considering using water-dropping helicopters at night.

The USFS experimented with night flying in the 1970s, but abandoned it after a helicopter collision and since then has said it is too dangerous to fly helicopters 30 minutes after sunset.

The Associated Press reports that USFS Fire and Aviation Management Director Tom Harbor said:

“We are in the process . . . of one more time taking a look at night-flying operations. But we will have to make sure that those operations, before we change our policy, are worth the benefits.”

In a report they issued on November 18, the LA County Fire Department criticized the USFS for not using helicopters at night during the early stages of the August-September 160,000-acre Station Fire near Los Angeles that killed two LA County firefighters.

In 1977 two night flying helicopters collided, one operated by the USFS and the other by the Los Angeles County Fire Department. The helicopters were preparing to land at a water reloading point. Both pilots were wearing night-vision goggles. One of the pilots was killed, and the other sustained serious injuries.

After that collision, some pilots abandoned night-vision goggles for a while, or wore them only during certain phases of the mission. The goggles produce “tunnel vision”, providing a narrow field of view and very little peripheral vision. If a fire has a significant amount of flames, enough light is sometimes available in the active fire area that night-vision goggles are not necessary to actually make the water drop, but may be required flying to and from the drop area.

Several fire agencies in southern California currently use helicopters to suppress fires at night, including Los Angeles County, San Diego County, and Kern County. San Bernardino County operates helicopters at night for law enforcement operations, but the last we heard, they did not use them on fires at night.  Orange County recently bought $25 million worth of specially equipped helicopters so they could operate at night, but a dispute with their union has kept their ships grounded after dark.

One of the modifications that must be made to a helicopter in order to be used with night-vision goggles is to enable the instrument panel lights to be adjusted to a very low level, because the goggles magnify all light by hundreds of thousands of times. Normal panel lights would overwhelm the goggles.

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