At 5 a.m. on Saturday the U.S. Senate passed a budget bill for the first time in four years. It would provide funding for the federal government including the wildland fire programs of the five major land management agencies in fiscal year 2014, which begins October 1, 2013.
The bill included an amendment offered by Colorado Senator Mark Udall which increased the funding for wildland fire programs, providing $100 million more than originally specified in the bill. In a press release issued on March 21 the Senator said the amendment would:
…increase the funding availability for fighting wildfires and modernizing the air tanker fleet. … Our amendment would ensure that firefighting resources are given top priority. This will help give Federal land agencies the tools they need to save lives, homes, and property across the country.
Here is the official summary of the amendment:
Udall (CO) amendment to provide additional suppression resources to the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior for the protection of communities, homes, water supplies, utility infrastructure, and natural resources from catastrophic wildfires. (#239) Agreed to in Senate by Voice Vote.
The Senate version of the bill passed by one vote, 50 to 49, but it will face a tough test in the Republican dominated House of Representatives where it could be modified. Or if the House never passes any version of an appropriations bill for next fiscal year, the federal government would be back to a continuing resolution with little or no change to funding levels for the land management agencies.
The Associated Press interviewed Chief of the U.S. Forest Service Tom Tidwell and reported that there will be 500 fewer wildland firefighters working for the agency this year. Here is an excerpt from the article:
The agency, which is trying to absorb a 5 percent cut in its preparedness funding due to sequestration, plans to preposition firefighters and other resources in areas where fire activity is expected to be above normal.
The funding cut will mean about 500 fewer fighters and 50 fewer engines with crews. The agency will also have to rely more on aircraft that are not on contract with the federal government, and Tidwell said that could ultimately lead to higher firefighting costs.
“We will respond like we always have, whatever it takes for us to be prepared,” he said.
By “aircraft that are not on contract with the federal government”, Chief Tidwell probably is referring to borrowing again from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre or the state of Alaska some of their CV-580 air tankers — as long as they are not needed in Alaska or Canada. The CV-580 holds a maximum of 2,100 gallons and are modified Convair CV-340 or CV-440 aircraft manufactured between 1947 and 1954 which have had the piston engines replaced by turbo-props.
It has been 1 year, 3 months, and 13 days since the U.S. Forest Service issued their solicitation for next-generation air tankers, but no contracts have been awarded. The federal contracts for all large and very large air tankers expired December 31, 2013. Some of the expired contracts have been temporarily extended for a few months.
Myrtle Fire north of Hot Springs, SD, July 19, 2012 Photo by Bill Gabbert
Maintaining a wildfire suppression infrastructure is expensive, but as the saying goes, “you can pay me now or pay me later”. Wildfires are going to occur, regardless of the number of fire suppression resources that are funded by the government. An adequate number of firefighters on the ground and in the air can implement a prescription for keeping new fires from becoming megafires:
Rapid initial attack with overwhelming force using both ground and air resources, arriving within the first 10 to 30 minutes when possible.
The current paradigm of cascading federal budget cuts for fire suppression has reduced the capability of putting out wildfires while they are small. An aggressive initial attack on an emerging fire may cost $10,000, or $50,000, or even $75,000. But when the fire is put out quickly, the firefighters become available to attack the next fire with overwhelming force, rather than being tied up on a huge fire that may take six weeks to wrap up.
And that huge fire may cost $30 million to $50 million to suppress.
Suppression costs of seven fires in 2012:
Mustang Complex, Idaho, $38 million
High Park, Colorado, $38 million
Chips, California, $54 million
Wenatchee Complex, Washington, $32 million
Bagley, California, $37 million
North Pass, California, $30 million
Trinity Ridge, Idaho, $41 million
But the suppression costs can pale in comparison to the property damage for an urban interface fire. In 2012 insurance companies in Colorado paid an estimated $450 million for damage caused by two wildfires, primarily for structures that burned.
Estimated costs to insurers for property damage on wildfires:
2012, Waldo Canyon Fire, Colorado, $353 million
2012 High Park Fire, Colorado, $97 million
2010, Fourmile Canyon Fire, Colorado, $224 million
In 2012, according to the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control, wildfires in the state destroyed more than 648 structures, killed six people, burned more than 384,000 acres and caused at least $538 million in property losses
Fighting fire on the cheap can be very expensive in lost lives, megafires, and property damage. Investing money up front to reduce the number of megafires can save money. The current strategy of fewer federal firefighters and large air tankers is not working. In the decade of the 1990s the average size of a wildfire in the lower 49 states was 30 acres. In the three years of the present decade the average size is 93 acres. In 2012 almost half of the time when wildland firefighters requested an air tanker to help slow down a wildfire, the call went unanswered because none were available.
We need to restore the initial attack capability that we had in the 1990s. More firefighters and large air tankers can help to keep fires small. In 2002 the federal government had 44 large air tankers on exclusive use contracts. By 2012 the fleet had atrophied to nine. Some wildfire experts recommend that we need 30, 40, or even 50. The U.S. Forest Service has been trying to contract for approximately seven additional “next generation” air tankers, bringing the total up to 16. The newer aircraft would be turbine-powered, be able to cruise at 300 knots (345 mph), and preferably have a capacity of 3,000 to 5,000 gallons of retardant. The USFS issued the solicitation 1 year, 3 months, and 2 days ago, but no contracts have been awarded.
The USFS-funded RAND air tanker study found that a 3,000-gallon air tanker costs approximately $7.1 million a year without the costs of retardant. In fiscal year 2010 the USFS spent $10.3 million on retardant. Using these figures, a fleet of 30 large air tankers for a year would cost about the same as the property damage and suppression of one large urban interface fire, the 2010 Fourmile Canyon Fire near Boulder, Colorado — or about one-fifth of the property damage on the 2003 Cedar fire in California.
Firefighters on the ground and in the air will never put out every fire while they are small, and air tankers alone can’t do it either. Aircraft don’t put out fires — at best they can slow them down temporarily, allowing firefighters on the ground to stop the spread. Going forward we need a complete palette of resources, a tool box of complementary weapons, each with their niche, working together.
New data that the National Interagency Fire Center released about the 2012 wildfire season reveals that almost half, or 48 percent, of the requests for large air tankers could not be filled. Of the 914 requests, 438 were rejected as “unable to fill” (UTF), meaning no air tankers were available to respond to the fire; 67 were cancelled for various reasons.
P2V air tanker on Whoopup fire, July 18, 2011. Photo by Bill Gabbert
Updated at 1:44 p.m. MT, February 20, 2013
Since the U.S. Forest Service has not awarded any new contracts for next-generation, legacy, or very large air tankers and all existing contracts expired December 31, 2012, this left none available as the wildland fire season began in the southwest United States.
In order to mitigate this self-inflicted crisis, the USFS just extended Neptune’s 2012 expired contract through March 5 and Minden’s contract through April 22, according to information from Jennifer Jones of the agency’s office in Boise. The contract for the DC-10 has also been extended.
Red Flag Warnings have been issued three times this week for extreme wildland fire danger in New Mexico and western Texas.
It as has been 1 year, 2 months, and 20 days since the U.S. Forest Service issued a solicitation for next-generation large air tankers, but no contracts have been awarded. Also waiting for a decision from the USFS are solicitations for 50+ year-old legacy air tankers and very large air tankers, such as the DC-10 and 747.
We inquired with the USFS about another product we are waiting on, the result of the $380,000 study that was supposed to have been completed in November by AVID that would “identify the appropriate number and types of aviation resources necessary to effectively meet future fire management needs”. This is the sixth air tanker study in the last 17 years.
Ms. Jones told us “the study has been completed and the Forest Service is currently reviewing it. When the review is completed, the report will be released to the public. No date has been set for that at this time.”
If it is released, it will be a pleasant change from how the USFS treated the last air tanker study, the RAND air tanker report which was stamped top secret. RAND released their $840,092 report July 30, 2012 two years after it was completed, but as far as we know the USFS never did, even after a Freedom of Information Act Request. The agency told Wildfire Today “…the report is proprietary and confidential RAND business information and must be withheld in entirety under FOIA Exemption 4″.
From the White House’s web site: http://www.whitehouse.gov/open
This article was updated at 1:44 p.m. MT, February 20, 2013, providing more information about the AVID air tanker study.
Over at Fire Aviation we explored the concept for a squadron of UAV air tankers that would be deployed from a large cargo aircraft orbiting over a wildfire… at night.
