File photo of a Newfoundland Labrador CL-415 at Goose Bay. Photo by Sarah Moller.
Bombardier Aerospace announced today that it has signed a firm purchase agreement with the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador for two Bombardier CL-415 amphibious air tankers. The transaction is valued at approximately $73.7 million US, based on list price, and includes various product enhancements. Deliveries of the aircraft will begin during the second quarter of 2014 and will continue in 2015.
With the two new aircraft, the province will have four CL-415s and one CL 215.
Canada is home to nearly 60 CL-215s and 415s – the largest national fleet of its kind in the world. There are 165 of the aircraft in service worldwide.
In August we wrote about three football teams named “Wildfire”. Today we ran across someone talking about wildfire on Twitter and it turned out to be referring to what appears to be a girls’ hockey team in Canada (see the photo above).
This video from National Geographic’s site shows the interior of a forest fire that was shot in Canada’s Northwest Territory during the International Crown Fire Modelling Experiment. I would not want to depend on a fire shelter to protect me during conditions like this.
On the National Geographic site, one of the comments asked, “Can someone tell why the heck they are burning this forest in the first place?”
Franco Nogarin replied: “We burn this forest so that we can know exactly how fire behaves under certain conditions. Nature burned the forest regularly as a natural occurrence before we (humans) settled everywhere, So its not hurting anything to burn these sections of forest in the name of Science. The benefits are that we we have very precise information about how wildfire works, We know what prevention measures work and which dont under specific conditions. These are not things we want to learn by trial and error in out of control wildfires 😉 ”
In addition to fire behavior experiments, quite a bit of other research is conducted during these fires, including measuring the effects on personal protective equipment, fire shelters, and various types of building materials.
Below is a still photo from the experiment.
Northwest Crown Fire Modelling Experiment. USFS photo.
When an 18-wheeler crashed into a road grader and caught fire in northern Canada on July 29, an air tanker was called in to help prevent the fire from spreading farther into the vegetation. This video was shot on a cell phone by Shawn Noseworthy, a manager with Humber Valley Paving, who was part of a work crew on site when the crash occurred about 30 miles from Churchill Falls, a town of 650 residents.
Here are a couple of screen grabs — the video is below.
The Royal Newfoundland and Labrador Constabulary says the driver of the tractor-trailer rig slammed head-on into the road grater. He was trapped inside as the big rig caught fire, but the grater driver managed to pull the big rig driver to safety. He was taken to Goose Bay-Happy Valley and treated for non-life-threatening injuries at the hospital.
I am not sure if it’s a CL-215, CL215T, or CL-415. I can’t see any winglets at the end of the wings, but I think there are some ‘finlets‘ – two vertical stabilizers on each side of the horizontal tail surface. The presence of both would indicate either a turbo-converted CL-215 or a CL-415. In the audio, it sounds like turbine engines.
Kamov KA-32 at Loulé heliport in Portugal, similar to the one that crashed in B.C. Sunday. Photo by Bill Gabbert, August 29, 2012.
A Russian-built Kamov KA-32 helicopter made a crash landing in British Columbia Sunday, August 4. Jen Norie of VIH Aviation Group confirmed that one of their helicopters was conducting water dropping operations on a wildfire near Bella Colla, British Columbia using an external bucket when the aircraft developed an engine problem. The ship made a hard landing on uneven terrain collapsing at least one landing gear, which caused the aircraft to tip over about 30 degrees. The twin overhead counter-rotating main rotors struck the ground, which of course destroyed them.
Thankfully the two pilots walked away with no injuries, so in that sense it was a “good landing”. There were no passengers on board.
Ms. Norie said the company has been operating KA-32s since the mid-1990s, accumulating over 46,000 flight hours without a major incident, until Sunday.
The registration number on the Kamov was RA-31591.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation quotes the chair of the fire equipment working group for the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre as saying fire shelters have not been used by wildland firefighters in Canada since 2005.
In Canada, fire shelters are no longer used at all. Marc Mousseau, chair of the fire equipment working group for the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, said they were never widely deployed, and B.C. became the last province to stop deploying them in 2005.
Lucy Tower, manager of B.C.’s fire equipment depot, told CBCNews.ca Tuesday that the decision was made because the province’s firefighters are never put in a situation where they would need to deploy a fire shelter. Much of the terrain where wildfires occur in Canada is also densely forested.
That type of terrain is unsuitable for using the shelters, said John Flinn, equipment coordinator for the New Brunswick provincial fire warehouse.
“You have to have some place open … where you can get away from adjacent fuels,” he said in a phone interview Tuesday. “There’s no place in the Maritimes you can do that, really.”
In general, Canadian wildfire fighters are equipped with the view that firefighters should avoid putting themselves in harm’s way to begin with.
In this video the Martin Mars, a single engine air tanker, and several helicopters are seen making water drops on a fire near Powell River in British Columbia June 9.
A two-hectare slash fire in Powell River is now under control, and it offered a good opportunity for the Hawaii Mars to show off the important role it can play in firefighting – an essential step given that the province has announced it will not use the bomber next fire season.
Alberni Valley resources played a big part in containing the blaze. Both the Martin Mars \water bomber and Thunderbird fire unit headed out to fight the Powell River fire on Tuesday.
“It was excellent for us,” said Wayne Coulson, CEO of the Coulson group, which owns the water bomber. “We did about four loads and whacked it out with a couple of other machines, and it was a quick one.”
According to Coastal Fire Centre fire information officer Marg Drysdale, the fire was three kilometres northeast of Powell River and the resources that took care of it were three initial attack crews, two officers and half a unit crew, which were the Thunderbirds.
“And then they brought in air tankers, including the Martin Mars,” Drysdale said. “And it knocked the fire down really well.” The fire was reported at 1: 55 p.m. and the Mars bomber began its action in Powell River at 5: 05 p.m., before finishing at 6: 16 p.m. after dropping four loads.
(Originally published at 1:12 pm MDT, July 4, 2013)
Reports are preliminary and a little vague at this point, but a CL-415 air tanker had a problem during or shortly after it was scooping water on a lake in western Newfoundland Wednesday. Both pilots are OK but were being checked out in a hospital as a precaution. The Newfoundland and Labrador’s Department of Transportation and Works confirmed that they were notified about the incident at about 3:30 p.m. that the aircraft had a problem while scooping water at Moosehead Lake near the town of Wabush.
The CBC reported that the Bombardier CL-415 lost power shortly after picking up the water and the pilot and co-pilot managed to turn the aircraft around and land safely on the lake. They got out and stood on the wing until they were rescued.
CTV News quotes Bruce Mullen of the Transportation Safety Board’s Atlantic region office as saying, “When the aircraft was riding along the surface of the water, picking up water, it appears that something went amiss and the aircraft had an incident and impacted the water.” He didn’t know the extent of the damage to the plane but it was still floating on the surface of the lake, he said.
A spokesman for the Department of Transportation and Works said it was working on a plan to retrieve the Bombardier 415 water bomber from Moosehead Lake. He said it is not known how long that process might take.
From Twitter:
@grahamjmarshall just posted another one. It’s visible from the TLH.
A Water Bomber still floats in Moosehead Lake near Labrador City today – 4 days after it fell in the water #CBCnlpic.twitter.com/kI8s81vBnm
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that a former volunteer firefighter was sentenced to a total of two years in jail for setting fires in the northern California counties of Sonoma and San Mateo. Our original story on the charges is here, and the Chronicle has the details about Friday’s sentencing of Nathaniel Ridgway Schmidt, 20, of Cazadero, California.
Extreme heat forecast for some areas in the West
This weekend and the first part of next week some areas in the west will experience extremely hot weather. The temperature for Death Valley was expected to reach nearly 130 on Friday — just short of the 134-degree reading from a century ago that stands as the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth. More details.
Much above normal temperatures are forecast for parts of the West on July 1-3, 2013. Map: NOAA and FEMA.
Helicopter crashes into river near Missoula
A helicopter made a crash landing into a river Friday while recertifying for water bucket operations near Missoula, Montana. Both the pilot and a passenger survived, according to an article in the Missoulian. More details are at Fire Aviation.
Colorado: West Fork Complex Fire
Smoke from the West Fork Complex at sunset, June 25, 2013 by @PagosaCabin
The Papoose Fire, part of the West Fork Complex of fires in southern Colorado, was extremely active Thursday night and early Friday morning, running for four miles and creating new spot fires 1 to 1.5 miles ahead. More details are in our main article about the fire.
New York Times on smaller budgets for fuel management
The New York Times is the latest news organization to run a major story on how the federal government is reducing the budgets for prescribed fire and other types of fuel mitigation which lower the fire risk by removing accumulations of thick vegetation in forests and in wildland-urban interfaces near populated areas. Here is an excerpt from their article:
The government has cut back on programs to reduce fire risks in areas where homes and the wilderness collide. The United States Forest Service treated 1.87 million acres of those lands in 2012, but expects to treat only 685,000 acres next year. Conservation advocates say that is likely to mean fewer people working to prevent runaway fires, fewer controlled burns and fewer trucks hauling away dry brush and tinder.
Trimming trees and clearing brush can make blazes less destructive, and the Forest Service said it had treated more than 26 million acres since 2000. But as the government spends an increasing amount to battle wildfires, critics say it makes little sense to cut back on prevention.
“There is a growing consensus in the West that dollar for dollar, these kinds of prevention efforts are paying off,” said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon. “And when the big fires break out, the bureaucracy steals money from the prevention fund and the problem gets worse. The Forest Service has become the fire service.”
Senators write letter about cuts in fuel treatments
More Senators have written another letter about cuts to fire budgets. The AP reports:
A bipartisan group of Western U.S. senators on Friday urged the Obama administration to focus more on preventing wildfires rather than taking money from programs that clear potentially hazardous dead trees and brush to fund efforts to fight the increasingly destructive blazes.
It is easy to write letters. Politicians tend to look the other way when it comes to actually DOING SOMETHING MEANINGFUL to correct the problem, such proposing and passing budget legislation. (sigh)
Wildfire smoke closes George Parks Highway in Alaska
Smoke from the Skinny’s Road Fire, which is named after a nearby bar, forced officials to close a section of the George Parks Highway between Nenana and Fairbanks on Wednesday. It reopened Thursday but travelers had to be escorted by pilot cars through the smoke. The highway is the main route between between Anchorage and Fairbanks, Alaska.
Lightning in the Yukon starts 23 fires
Fire managers in the Yukon Territory asked the British Columbia government to send 62 more fighters to help put out 23 new fires started by lightning Thursday. They will join the other 45 firefighters that B.C. sent to help out earlier.
“Obviously, the emphasis right now is the protection of life and property, while maintaining the safety of our staff,” said Fire Information Officer George Maratos.
“Given the intense fire behaviour on some of these fires, the safest and most effective response was from the air with air tankers and helicopters.”
One of the priority fires is burning 18 kilometres east of Faro. Two are near Carmacks: one 45 kilometres east of the community near Little Salmon River and another 16 kilometres northwest near Free Gold Road. The fourth is 36 kilometres northeast of Mayo.
Environment Canada is forecasting more thunderstorms in the area for Friday.
Los Alamos National Laboratory criticized for wildfire preparedness
A report issued by the Department of Energy’s inspector general said the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has not done enough to protect the facility from wildfires and other natural disasters. The inspectors were concerned about what would happen if an earthquake or fire caused damage that could lead to exposure from some of the radioactive waste stored at the lab.
On May 10, 2000, a fire that began as a prescribed fire in Bandalier National Monument burned into Los Alamos. The Cerro Grande Prescribed Fire was carried by very strong winds, with embers blowing a mile or more across the fire lines to the north, south, and east. The towns of Los Alamos and White Rock were in the fire’s path and more than 18,000 residents evacuated.
By the end of the day on May 10, the fire had burned 18,000 acres, destroyed 235 homes, and damaged many other structures. The fire also spread towards the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and although fires spotted onto the facility’s lands, all major structures were secured and no releases of radiation occurred.
Washington: Soap Lake fire department quits
The Columbia Basin Herald reports that after the Mayor of Soap Lake, Washington (map) fired the Fire Chief, 11 volunteer firefighters resigned from the fire department, leaving the town with no fire protection. This mess began from a fund raiser to replace the water tank on a wildland fire truck.
Oregon drought worries ranchers and firefighters
A severe drought in southeast Oregon has firefighters concerned and has forced the Bureau of Land Management to haul water to herds of wild mustangs and pronghorn antelope.
Mount Rushmore cancels July 4 fireworks show
Mount Rushmore has again cancelled the July 4 fireworks extravaganza, which rains down large quantities of fireworks debris into the forest and rocky slopes around the sculpture. Previous fireworks at the Memorial have caused over twenty small fires. The Park Superintendent, Cheryl Schreier, cited the fire hazard in the nearby beetle-damaged forest as the reason for the cancellation.
