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Are Very Large Air Tankers needed in Arizona?

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags 46 Comments on Are Very Large Air Tankers needed in Arizona?
Martin Mars gel drop in Canada
Martin Mars making a gel drop recently in Canada. Photo: Forestry Division – Sustainable Resource Development

Update at 9:30 a.m. MT, June 9, 2011

KPHO’s report about the 747 being activated for the Arizona fires, even though it was picked up by numerous web sites and spread around the internet like, uh, wildfire, is incorrect. Wildfire Today talked with Steven Daniels who leads the 747 Supertanker program at Evergreen and he said the 747 is not being dispatched. As we reported yesterday below, the U.S. Forest Service is not interested in agreeing to an exclusive use contract with Evergreen or 10 Tanker Air Carrier for their 747 or the DC-10 air tankers.

However, Rick Hatton, the CEO of 10 Tanker Air Carrier, told Wildfire Today Thursday that one of their DC-10 Very Large Air Tankers, Tanker 911, is en route to Phoenix Mesa Gateway airport now to work on the fires. They still do not have any kind of a contract with the USFS, so they are being activated through a Call When Needed contract the company has with CalFire. This is the same methodology used when the DC-10 was used in Texas a few weeks ago.

CalFire explained the deployment of the DC-10 on their website:

Victorville – One of the nation’s only DC-10 Very Large Airtankers has been deployed from California to assist in fighting the raging wildland fire in Arizona. The request was made yesterday by the United States Forest Service. The aircraft, Tanker 911, took off this morning to help in Arizona from its base in Victorville.

The Forest Service is accessing the DC-10 through a call when needed contract CAL FIRE has with 10 Tanker, the company that operates the only two DC-10 Very Large Airtankers in the world. During peak fire season, CAL FIRE has an exclusive use contract with 10 Tanker to enhance its aerial firefighting fleet.

Update at 11:54 p.m. MT, June 8, 2011

KPHO is reporting that “fire officials” said late Wednesday that they are bringing in the Evergreen 747 Supertanker to assist with the fires. It should arrive Thursday. The aircraft has been sitting at Tucson, so it will be a short 20-25 minute flight to the Wallow fire, if that is where it will be used.

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If you are wondering why you have not heard anything about the Very Large Air Tankers (VLAT) like the 747 or DC-10 being used in Arizona, it’s because they are not working on any fires in the United States. It is interesting that in the last couple of months both Mexico and Canada have contracted to use VLATs, with the 747 working in Mexico and the Martin Mars working in Mexico and Canada. A DC-10 is currently beginning an assignment in Canada. Two VLATs are being used in Canada right now, and another two are sitting at airports in Arizona and California waiting for the phone to ring.

We try not to be an armchair Incident Commander and second guess from hundreds of miles away the firefighters that are at the scene of a fire, breathing smoke and making decisions based on actual facts, so until we hear otherwise, we’ll give the firefighting agencies the benefit of the doubt and consider that maybe with the 15 to 18 large air tankers (conventional, not VLAT) that are presently or soon to be on contract and available, that there are plenty of them to deal with the very extremely large fires in Arizona, the multiple fires in Colorado, and the ones in Alaska. And the large DC-10s and the 747 may or may not be suitable for working in those terrain conditions.

One issue is that some large air tankers are not scheduled to come on contract until June 10. So, in a couple of days one or more additional conventional air tankers will be available.

Another issue is that this year the U.S. Forest Service is not interested in signing Exclusive Use contracts with the VLAT companies, which would put the aircraft on contract to be on standby every day for a period of months and be guaranteed payment for availability. The USFS is offering Call When Needed (CWN) contracts, whereby the agency would only pay for actual use on a fire, or for specific standby during a period of high fire activity.

It is going to be difficult for operators of VLATs to remain in business if the aircraft are only used on rare occasions. With only 18 or 19 large air tankers on exclusive use contracts, versus the 44 we had in 2002, one might assume that the federal government would be seeking ways to have more air tankers available. And one would be wrong if they made that assumption.

Evergreen’s 747 Supertanker

We talked with Steven Daniels who leads the Supertanker program at Evergreen. Their 747, Tanker 979, holds 20,000 gallons, about seven times more than a conventional large air tanker. He told us that presently they have no contract with the U.S. Forest Service. Daniels said the USFS offered them a CWN contract, meaning that most of the fire season an expensive piece of equipment would sit without receiving any compensation. Evergreen would like to get an Exclusive Use contract, but the USFS is not interested in that concept.

Daniels told us that he received a phone call from the White House recently asking why the Supertanker was not being used in Arizona. He told them that it is available, sitting at Tucson, Arizona, but there is no contract with the USFS.

DC-10

The 10 Tanker Air Carrier company has two DC-10 VLATs which have performed over 350 missions on 50 fires in their four years of operations, carrying up to 11,000 gallons of retardant, about four times more than a conventional large air tanker. One of them, Tanker 910, flew to Alberta, Canada yesterday and will begin working on fires out of Cold Bay today. The other, Tanker 911, is sitting at their base in Victorville, California, available for an assignment. Rick Hatton, the CEO of the company, told Wildfire Today that at this time neither of the DC-10s is on contract with the USFS. As with the 747, the USFS is not interested in an Exclusive Use contract with 10 Tanker Air Carrier, and a CWN contract is winding its way through the federal government contracting offices now. CalFire will have one of the DC-10s on Exclusive Use contract later this year. Hatton, like Daniels of Evergreen, would also like to have an Exclusive Use contract with the USFS, but at this time it is not in the cards.

Martin Mars

Right now the Martin Mars is also working on fires in Canada, flying out of Gregoire Lake near Fort McMurray. The company has a contract with the British Columbia government, but none with the USFS or any other agency in the United States. It can carry up to 7,200 gallons and can scoop water from a lake and mix gel or foam concentrate into it from on-board tanks.

Congressional hearing topics: air tankers, and USFS reduces workforce

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , 7 Comments on Congressional hearing topics: air tankers, and USFS reduces workforce

Updated at 5:34 p.m. MT, May 23, 2011

On May 19, 2011 the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies, held a hearing about the U. S. Forest Service Budget. Sitting at the witness table was the Chief of the Forest Service, Tom Tidwell. Two topics related to wildfire management were discussed during the hearing, a major budget cut and the future of the large air tanker fleet.

Reduction in the number of USFS employees:

The budget proposal that the administration has submitted will require the agency to reduce the number of employees by 1,819 permanent full-time positions. It is not clear which programs will be affected by this, in spite of a direct question by Senator Jon Tester, D-Montana. Here is an excerpt from that portion of the hearing’s transcript:

TESTER: OK. Wildland fire management, $400 million — almost $400 million. Fires are a fact of life. But we all know we need to handle them in a way, because there’s a lot of people that live out there, there’s a lot of forest communities.

Can you tell me how that budget’s going to impact firefighting, and in particular if it’s going to have any impact on protecting our forest communities?

TIDWELL: Our proposed budget will provide the same level of preparedness that we’ve had for the last few years, the same number of firefighters, the — the same number of aviation resources.

TESTER: OK.

So where’d the $400 million come from?

TIDWELL: Well, part of it, close to $100 million of those funds, were — are part of the integrated resource restoration budget line item.

TESTER: Which does what?

TIDWELL: Well, part of — that’s for — some of the hazardous fuels funding was moved into IRR.

TESTER: OK. So let’s — let’s just stop there for — for a second. It — it was moved into other accounts, so it’s still going to be funded or it’s not going to be done?

TIDWELL: It’s — majority (inaudible) was moved. There was a $9 million reduction. And that hazardous fuels work that we do outside of the wildland urban interface.

(CROSSTALK)

TESTER: Right. Because if there’s more hazardous fuels, it sounds to me — and correct me if I’m wrong — there’s more potential for fire; and you might have the same number of firemen, but you may have more fires.

TIDWELL: That’s — it’s a combination of our approach to be addressing the hazardous fuels, but at the same time providing that level of preparedness. And it — you know, we felt it was essential to maintain almost the same level of fuels work.

TESTER: OK, 1,819 employees will be terminated or not replaced if they retire, however you’re going to do it. And I’m all about making folks lean and mean and — and all that. Can you give me an indication on where those people are going to come from?

TIDWELL: Well, we did project that it’ll be — with this budget proposal, there’s a — will be a loss of about 1,800 permanent full- time positions. That’s about what we — our attrition rate is each year.

So we believe that for this budget proposal, with what we normally see with the number of people that retire or leave the agency, that we’ll be able to — to handle this level of reduction without having to take any actions with any of our employees.

The challenge will be is to — to match up the — you know, the — where we’ve lost the funding in these programs with our existing workforce. But we have — we’ve done a very good job to manage our workforce, I mean, to the point, we have a stable, flat workforce since about 1995.

And we’ve continued to do more and more work through contracting so that we are, I believe, well positioned, because our conservative approach to our workforce over the years, to be able to handle this.

TESTER: Just one last, if I may, Mr. Chairman?

You touched on something that drives me crazy in government, and that we reduce the workforce on one hand and we replace it with contract labor on the other hand. The cost is more than the workforce that existed before. That’s not going to happen here?

TIDWELL: No. No, I — I believe we’ll probably be doing less contract work in 2012 to be able to, you know, maintain our existing workforce. TESTER: OK. Thank you very much.

Large air tankers

The USFS has been studying the issue of replacing the fleet of large air tankers since the “Blue Ribbon Panel”, chaired by former NTSB Chairman James E. Hall, evaluated the air tanker program following the two crashes in 2002 in which the wings fell off very old military surplus aircraft, killing five people. Those crashes resulted in the permanent grounding of about 60 percent of the large air tankers, from 44 in 2002 to the 18 or so we have today.

Now there is still another study going on, this time by the Rand Corporation. It was due in January, 2011, but even Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-California, has had difficulty finding out anything about it. Last week, according to a newspaper article, Tom Vilsack, the Secretary of Agriculture, responding three months after her inquiry, said the report would not be completed until August. Will this report simply sit on a shelf next to the last one, or will the USFS actually do something this time?

Referring to the air tanker fleet with an average age of 50 years, in 2009 the USFS said that after 2012 “air tankers currently approved for use by the federal agencies will be either too expensive to maintain or no longer airworthy”.

Below is a discussion during Thursday’s hearing between Senator Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Ranking Member, and Tom Tidwell, Chief of the U. S. Forest Service:
Continue reading “Congressional hearing topics: air tankers, and USFS reduces workforce”

Air tanker base at Fort Huachuca, Arizona

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags 2 Comments on Air tanker base at Fort Huachuca, Arizona

Bill Hess of the Herald/Review has written an interesting article about the operation of the air tanker base at Fort Huachuca, Arizona (map). Air tankers from that base are working on the Horseshoe Two fire near Portal, AZ which has burned over 22,000 acres. Here is how the article begins:

FORT HUACHUCA — It was 13:29 — 1:29 p.m. -—Saturday when a former Navy P3V broke ground over Libby Army Airfield’s main runway.

Ahead of it was at least a 73-mile flight before it dropped more than 2,500 gallons of retardant on the Horseshoe Two Fire near Portal.

It was to be the 41st flight of retardant drops on the fire not far from the New Mexico state line.

During the previous 40 flights, 80,306 gallons of retardant, the red solutions used to create a line around a wildfire to help contain the blaze, had been dropped on the Horseshoe Two Fire, said Eric Lathrop, the Forest Service’s assistant tanker base manager.

Each gallon of retardant — it is no longer called slurry — weighs nearly nine pounds and is mixed on the air tanker base to be readily available to be pumped into “the heavies,” as the large twin- and four-engine aircrafts are called, by employees of Phos-Chek.

Besides the P3V, there are two P2Vs currently assigned to the tanker base. The P3V is a four-engine plane, while the P2Vs have two radial engines along with two small jet engines used during takeoffs and sometimes while making the retardant attack runs, said Jim Maloney, a Forest Service tanker base manager who now only works “during the fire season” at Libby.

Both Lathrop and Maloney said a bad fire season is expected this year, with Lathrop noting the Libby base opened “two months early.”

Here is some information from Wikipedia about the airport at Fort Huachuca:

Sierra Vista Municipal Airport (IATA: FHU, ICAO: KFHU, FAA LID: FHU), a joint-use airport which shares facilities with Libby Army Airfield, is located on Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista, Arizona. The airport has three runways and one helipad. It is mostly used for military aviation for the surrounding military base.

As per Federal Aviation Administration records, the airport had 1,304 passenger boardings (enplanements) in calendar year 2005 and 2,041 enplanements in 2006. According to the FAA’s National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2007–2011, Sierra Vista is a general aviation airport (the commercial service category requires at least 2,500 passenger boardings per year). Scheduled commercial service by Great Lakes Airlines to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport ended on February 28, 2007.

 

USFS accepting comments on draft EIS for use of fire retardant

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , ,
fire retardant dropping
Photo by Bill Gabbert

The U. S. Forest Service is accepting public comments on a draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) they just completed on the use of fire retardant. The DEIS was written in response to a July, 2010 decision by U. S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy in a lawsuit filed in 2008 by the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics.

The FSEEE claims that the use of retardant damages aquatic resources and terrestrial ecosystems. In October 2010 the organization stated their opinion on the effectiveness of retardant on fires.

There is no evidence that aerially-applied chemical fire retardant is effective in meeting any wildland firefighting objectives. For example, there are no studies or data that evaluate home losses to wildland fire as a result of etardant use vs. non-use. There are no studies or data that evaluate firefighter injuries or fatalities as a result of retardant use vs. non-use. There are no studies or data that evaluate the proportion of fire retardant drops that actually influence a fire’s ultimate disposition, as opposed to those drops that prove irrelevant to the fire’s fate, e.g., are dropped outside the fire’s final perimeter. Although retardant slows the rate at which fire spreads through some flammable materials in laboratory conditions, that’s a far cry from retardant affecting fire outcomes in the real world of wildland firefighting.

The DEIS is available online for review and comment. The USFS will consider public remarks submitted during the comment period in the development of the final environmental impact statement expected to be completed by Dec. 31, 2011.

The Forest Service will host several community listening sessions:

  • May 24, Ocala, Fla.
  • May 26, Missoula, MT
  • June 7, Santa Barbara, Calif.
  • June 9, Wenatchee, Wash.
  • June 15, Tucson, Ariz.
  • June 16, National Community Listening Session via webinar

More information about the listening sessions, including times and locations.

North Carolina sold CL-215 Super Scooper on eBay, a month before the Pains Bay fire

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags 11 Comments on North Carolina sold CL-215 Super Scooper on eBay, a month before the Pains Bay fire
North Carolina's CL-215 before it was sold in March
North Carolina's CL-215 before it was sold in March. State of NC photo.

A month before the Pains Bay fire started in North Carolina, the state’s Division of Forest Resources sold their only large air tanker, a CL-215, on eBay. The aircraft was built by Canadair in 1969 and was purchased by North Carolina in 1998 for $4 million. It had been mothballed since May, 2008 because it had become too expensive to operate, David Lane, head of the forest protection for the division, said in 2007. Lane said it cost up to $1.2 million a year, which was 35 percent of the division’s aircraft budget. The state did not have the funding for an estimated $1.5 million needed for repairs and FAA-required maintenance.

North Carolina listed the aircraft on eBay and accepted the winning bid of $445,099 from Buffalo Airways of Yellowknife, Northwest Territory, Canada on March 30, 2011. Buffalo Airways purchased it sight unseen and planned to fly a team to Hickory, NC to perform necessary maintenance and repairs, then fly it 5,000 miles to its new home.

Since then, some recent news reports about the 20,954-acre Pains Bay fire on the North Carolina coast have included criticism of the sale of the air tanker. Tom Crews is the Fire Management Officer of the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge where the fire is burning, and was the Type 3 Incident Commander before Mike Quesinberry’s Type 1 Incident Management Team assumed command on May 8. Crews has been quoted as saying:

If we’d had the CL 215, we’d have been able to stop this fire by now, there’s no doubt in my mind.

and:

It’s a real workhorse. It can drop more than three times as much water as any other plane.

A CL-215, according to the CalFire Firefighting Aircraft Recognition Guide, can hold 1,300 to 1,621 gallons, depending on the model. Other air tankers can drop from 300 to 20,000 gallons.

The state of North Carolina has four single engine air tankers (SEATs). Three of them are Melex M18A Dromader’s, and one is a Rockwell S2R. These SEATs can drop 400 to 500 gallons of water or retardant. The state has a fire Aviation Resources web page, but it was last updated in 2008.

The CL-215 air tanker is not the only wildfire aircraft that the state wants to sell. Here is an excerpt from a May 17, 2010 report from Wildfire Today about a panel’s recommendation that they dispose of another 19 aircraft used for fire management:

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Continue reading “North Carolina sold CL-215 Super Scooper on eBay, a month before the Pains Bay fire”

Martin Mars air tanker is busy in Mexico

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , , 7 Comments on Martin Mars air tanker is busy in Mexico
Martin Mars air tanker taking off
Martin Mars air tanker taking off; a screen grab from the video below.

The Martin Mars air tanker that began a 20-day contract on April 24 to assist the Mexican government with suppression of their wildfires has been busy recently after being grounded for a while by strong winds.

Here is an excerpt from an article at Canada.com, dated May 6, 2011:

…The aircraft and its accompanying Sikorsky helicopter started making drops last Friday, said Wayne Coulson, who owns both aircraft through the Coulson Group of Companies.

The aircraft has been working seven hours a day, dropping up to 10 loads of water, said Coulson. On Monday, the Mars dumped 210,000 litres of water and gel.

“We’re flying her more than we ever have,” said Coulson from his Port Alberni office this week.

The expanse of the wildfires is overwhelming, he added. “A big chunk of the country is on fire – it’s right down to Cancun,” Coulson said. The enemy is the weather. Temperatures have soared to 46 C and then dipped to 10 C, perfect conditions for thunderstorms.

“The lighting strikes are just relentless,” Coulson said.

The helicopter uses infrared cameras to see through smoke and pinpoint the location of the flames. It has been a valuable asset for the Mexicans, said Coulson. They have used the helicopter to map fires and set their priorities on what order they should be attacked. The success of the technological improvements is gratifying.

“We’ve waited almost three years to be able to prove we can go and utilize this technology,” he said. “They really watch their pesos, and for every aircraft that’s working, [the fire bosses] are filming and making determinations.”

Having an aircraft drop water in the middle of a fire does not do any good because the flames are moving out along the edges, he said. A YouTube video of the Martin Mars shows it making its drop along the leading edge of the fire, creating a fire break with surrounding land.

Every drop of water and gel has to be accurate and cost-effective for the customer, said Coulson. A single drop by the Martin Mars can cost the customer $15,000.

A normal day begins with the Sikorsky flying from Texas into Mexico to clear customs and obtain one-day permit to be in the country and pick up Mexican bosses. At the end of the day, the helicopter hands in its permit to Mexican officials and returns to Texas where it again clears customs.

Martin Mars air tanker practice drop
Martin Mars air tanker practice drop; screen grab from the video below.

Check out the video below, uploaded to YouTube on June 24, 2010. It includes several practice drops, some of which were filmed by the infrared camera on the helicopter the airtanker uses as a lead plane, a Sikorsky S-76B.

More information about the Martin Mars is in our article from April 23, 2011.

 

Thanks Barb