Here is a video shot from the cockpit of a P-3 Orion as it makes a drop on the Monument fire in southern Arizona. This is how “Towpilot2003” described it on YouTube:
P-3 on the monument fire Tuesday June 14 when it crossed the highway. We stopped this portion of the fire using only aircraft as the ground troops couldn’t keep up with it’s incredible pace.
Looking at the map at the Monument fire link above, I’m thinking they were dropping east of Highway 92 and south of E. Hereford Road.
Be sure and click on Full Screen — you’ll feel like you’re in the aircraft. The camera is very shaky, but the video is impressive, nonetheless:
I can’t imagine what it’s like flying through smoke like that.
Below is what the OUTSIDE of a P-3 looks like.
P-3 Orion, making a low drop on a fire near Cedar City, Utah, in 2006. From zionhelitack.blogspot.com
Update at 8:40 a.m. MT June 18, 2011: Two additional MAFFS aircraft have been activated. The second two are from North Carolina. All four will be based at Albuquerque, NM.
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MAFFS C-130 dropping in Texas, April, 2011. CNN
Two Modular Airborne Firefighting System (MAFFS) equipped military C-130 aircraft have been activated and dispatched to the southwest to help fight the numerous large fires that have burned hundreds of thousands of acres this month. The California based air tankers left June 16 for their new temporary base at Kirtland Air Force Base at Albuquerque, New Mexico. The MAFFS air tankers can carry 3,000 gallons of retardant.
There are a total of eight MAFFS units, positioned in four states, two units per state.
In April six MAFFS from military bases California, North Carolina, Wyoming, and Colorado were activated for fires. Four were used on wildfires in Texas, while two were based at Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas but were used on fires about 60 miles away from Laughlin in Mexico. The MAFFS did not see a lot of use in Texas because about the time they were activated humid air moved into the state, slowing the spread of the fires. But two of them were pretty busy in Mexico.
The rules that govern the use of the C-130s require that privately-owned air tankers be fully committed before the military aircraft can be used on fires.
MAFFS 2 tank, the new version of the MAFFS, which is loaded into a C-130 when the aircraft is activated as an air tanker.The interior of a MAFFS 2, showing the retardant discharge and emergency high pressure air release tubes going through the side paratrooper door. Loadmaster Bill Whitlatch operates a new MAFFS 2 unit aboard a C-130J aircraft with the Channel Islands Air National Guard. Photo by Stephen Osman, Ventura County Star.
HERE is a list of some of the recent articles at Wildfire Today that mentioned the MAFFS air tankers.
On Tuesday the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources held a hearing “to consider the wildfire management programs of the Federal land management agencies”. The Departments of Agriculture and Interior both had representatives provide testimony and answer questions from the Senators. The representatives were Kim Thorsen, the DOI’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Law Enforcement, Security, and Emergency Management (her written testimony), and Tom Tidwell, Chief of the U.S. Forest Service (his written testimony). As far as I know a transcript of the full hearing is not yet available.
A video of the hearing can be found at the Committee’s web site. The first 18 minutes shows a mostly empty room; the hearing actually begins at 18:00.
The Senators had vastly different points to make and questions to ask. Senator James Risch from Idaho bragged that he was probably the only Senator in the room that had a degree in forest management and that he had operated a Pulaski.
Senator Jon Kyl from Arizona talked about the fires currently burning in his state and that he thought the agencies should concentrate more on fire prevention, which would save money on suppression.
Senator Lisa Murkowski from Alaska has dogged the USFS for years about the state of the air tanker fleet and continued to do so in Tuesday’s hearing. Here is a portion of her statement/question, which begins at 26:00 in the video:
In 2003 we asked the Forest Service to tell us, what do you need to replace the heavy firefighting aircraft that were grounded in 2002? It took 10 years to develop an answer. And when it came it was with a $2 billion price tag during a time when the Congress was cutting the federal budget by 15% to 20% and it included no recommendation as to how we were going to pay for it.
Even more frustrating is that the agency seems to be fixated on one aircraft type and refuses to consider any other alternatives. Last month Chief Tidwell told me that the Forest Service would work to acquire a variety of aircraft types but his staff continues to tell people that the agency will only accept an aircraft that can carry 2,000 gallons of slurry. I just don’t understand why the Forest Service continues to tell the aircraft manufacturers and others here in Congress that whatever the aircraft it acquires it is going to need to carry 2,000 gallons of slurry.
So my message to the land management agencies is this. Develop a procurement plan to replace the aging aircraft that looks at a variety of types and sizes of aircraft. Develop a plan that has the flexibility to drop slurry, foam, gel, or water. Develop it to take advantage of the lakes and rivers that hold millions upon millions of gallons of water that could and should be dropped by water scooping aircraft. And finally do not ignore the opportunity to keep the existing fleet operational longer.
Later she asked more questions about large air tankers and about the use of Very Large Air Tankers (VLAT), the DC-10 and 747, suggesting that the USFS look at using the VLATs. Chief Tidwell said his agency would do so.
Tidwell also bragged that the USFS had used the DC-10 on the Wallow fire in Arizona. He failed to mention that it was only possible because it was borrowed from CalFire. The USFS currently has no contracts with any VLATs, and has refused to even consider exclusive use contracts for them like they have with the 19 large air tankers, offering the VLATs just call when needed contracts that would only pay if and when the aircraft were activated and used on individual fires.
Senator Murkowski also mentioned the recent article in the Washington Post titled “Firefighting planes have perhaps been on the job too long” that Wildfire Today covered on June 13.
Interestingly, Chief Tidwell reading from his pre-submitted written testimony, deviated from it by adding at the end, at 41:50 in the video:
In closing I want to touch on the issue of large air tankers. Large air tankers are an accepted part of wildland fire suppression, but our current fleet averages more than 50 years old. In the next 10 years more than half of our large air tankers will need to be replaced and we are studying the options and will be making a recommendation to you by the end of the summer.
Excerpts from the DOI about resources available in 2011:
Neptune Aviation's Tanker 10, a P2V large air tanker. Photo credit: Neptune Aviation
The Washington post pointed out in an article on Sunday that the 18 large air tankers on contract in the U.S. have an average age of about 50 years and are overdue for replacement.
The article hits on most of the same issues that we have written about at Wildfire Today on two occasions:
When two large air tankers crashed in 2002, killing five crew members, the U.S. Forest Service culled the fleet of 44 large air tankers, weeding out the most vulnerable, and the ones most susceptible to metal fatigue and other issues that compromised safety when flying in mountainous terrain, in and out of canyons. Today there are only about 18 large air tankers on exclusive use contracts, a 60% reduction from 2002. And this year the USFS is refusing to offer exclusive use contracts for Very Large Air Tankers, the DC-10 and 747.
In the nine years since the 2002 crashes and reduction in force of the air tanker fleet, the USFS has commissioned multiple reports about how to modernize the fleet. Deadlines have passed with little or no action taking place that would actually replace the aircraft.
Two private air tanker operators, Neptune and Menden, are both engaged in projects to retrofit 4-engine jet airliners, BAe-146 aircraft that are much younger than the the 50-year old air tankers now flying. Neither of them have passed muster with the Interagency Air Tanker board and have yet to drop on a fire.
Neptune Aviation's new air tanker, a BAe 146-200 conversion, being tested at Missoula airport in July, 2010. Photo by Bill Moss
The USFS is saying that later this year they will ask Congress for the funding to either buy new air tankers, or pay someone to retrofit used aircraft.
…Tom Harbour, national fire director for the Forest Service, said the secretary of agriculture will take a funding plan to Congress in August.
“We have good data on effectiveness and use,” Harbour said. “There’s always more data that we can collect to make a more compelling case.”
But why has it taken nine years since the 2002 crashes?
“Identifying the right air tankers and processing them is a very complex issue,” said Jeff Jahnke, Colorado’s state forester and president of the National Association of State Foresters, who said the criticism is unfair. The Forest Service is made up of “top performers, very science-focused, one of the leading incident managers in the world,” when it comes to wildfires, he said.
A source in the agency who asked not to be identified, fearing the loss of his job, said the Forest Service is trying to decide between two approaches: buying air tankers outright from aircraft manufacturers or requesting bids from aviation companies that rebuild airplanes, mostly from a Defense Department “bone yard” where aging military aircraft are placed after a specified number of flights.
The service could buy planes from several companies for about $2.5 billion, but it would be responsible for providing maintenance crews and pilots, experts said. The service could also request bids for large contracts with specifications to provide newer-model planes.
Manufacturers say they are prepared to provide whatever the government wants. Bombardier, a Canadian company, has repeatedly sought to sell its CL-415, built in 1991, to the United States. The turbo-engine plane can swoop to a water source, scoop 1,600 gallons and deliver it to a fire.
Bombardier has sold 155 planes worldwide, including 69 of the CL-415s to Italy, Spain, Greece and France for about $35 million each, said Derek Gilmour, vice president of sales and administration.
Air Tanker 911, a DC-10, drops retardant on the Wallow fire to reinforce the fireline above Greer, AZ, 6-11-2011. Photo by Jayson Coil. Credit: US Forest Service, Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest.
Air Tanker 911, a DC-10 that can carry up to 11,000 gallons of retardant, made two sorties Saturday to the Wallow fire in eastern Arizona.
Air Tanker 911, a DC-10, drops retardant on the Wallow fire to reinforce the fireline above Greer, AZ, 6-11-2011. Photo by Jayson Coil. Credit: US Forest Service, Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest.
And as a bonus, since you scrolled down this far, below are two more photos (non-DC-10) taken by Jason Coil on June 8, 2011. Credit: US Forest Service, Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest.
On Thursday, Air Tanker 911, a DC-10 Very Large Air Tanker, made its first drops on the Wallow fire in Arizona, dropping retardant near the Community of Greer which was overrun by the fire Wednesday evening. The DC-10 can carry up to 11,000 gallons of fire retardant, almost four times the capacity of a conventional large air tanker.
AZfamily.com has a gallery of 20 excellent photos of the DC-10 in action. But I think few if any of the photos were taken in Arizona; I could be wrong.
It is good to see the DC-10 being used, but again, very large air tankers don’t put out fires. They slow them down, like other air tankers, if the wind and terrain conditions are favorable. Firefighters on the ground put fires out.
