Tag: helicopter

From the AP, via KXMB.com:

MCCALL, Idaho  -Four people were injured when lightning struck a firefighting helicopter in central Idaho while it was on the ground.

None of the employees of Siller Brothers, Inc., a contract firefighting company, suffered life-threatening injuries in Tuesday evening’s incident, but they were transported to hospitals in the region for treatment.

The Sikorsky S64E Air-Crane helicopter was on a national contract with the Payette National Forest to help fight forest fires in the region.

The incident Tuesday night at about 8:45 a.m. took place just as the four crew members were doing end-of-day maintenance.

They were tying the chopper down as high winds hit the area following heavy rain and lightning.

Damage to the aircraft is still being surveyed.

 

“Elvis”, a Sikorsky S-64F Aircrane helitanker operated by Erickson, continues to impress at the Oshkosh air show. This is the first video I have seen of the Aircrane “scooping” water, rather than drafting.

(THE VIDEO IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE)

On Saturday we told you that Elvis, one of the Erickson Aircranes, was going to make an appearance at the air show at Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Well, he made it and appears to be one of the most popular attractions there, according to Wired Magazine.

An article at Wired has more photos and information.

Thanks Kelly.

I have always been intrigued by Iceland. Unlike it’s neighbor Greenland, there is quite a bit of vegetation on the small island nation. About one-fourth of the area of Iceland has a continuous plant cover.

But today was the first time that I had heard of a wildfire there.

On Monday, firefighters there fought a fire from 5 PM until 7 AM. It was a walk-in through difficult terrain. They asked for a helicopter to assist, presumably with a water bucket, and the request was denied…twice.

From the Iceland Review:

The wildfire occurred in the same place as Friday,” (head of the fire department)  Asmundur Jónsson said. The area is 420 meters above sea level, up in the mountain. The road leading there is treacherous and firemen have to walk through lava and thick moss, sometimes reaching their knees. A rescue squad transported equipment and supplies to the fire fighters.

The firemen experimented with additives in the water, intended to increase its effectiveness. The experiment went well, Jónsson said.

“I have been trying to get the helicopter twice and have been denied both times. They said that since no property was under risk in the moss fire in the heath east of Kleifarvatn Lake and no summer houses were in jeopardy, there was no need for it. However, many centuries’ old vegetation was being destroyed.”

Jónsson said that a source of water was only three kilometers away from the area. Being a difficult path to travel by foot, it would have been so easy for the helicopter. “It would have taken care of the fire in an hour or so,” he explained. “The conditions there are tremendous.”

In the previous article some former firefighters question the use of helicopters and weigh the risks vs. benefits of using the machines on wildfires. There is no question that helicopter operations have an inherent risk, but so do some of the alternatives.

Rich Fairbanks, a former Forest Service firefighter and a current fire specialist with The Wilderness Society, said fires in wilderness could be allowed to burn to rocky ridges and rivers, where they’ll go out naturally so that “expensive and risky helicopters” would not have to be used. Sure, there are some places where “fire use” fires are appropriate, but limited or passive fire suppression allows fires to get larger, exposing firefighters to additional weeks or months of hazards from snags, steep terrain, vehicle accidents, and to one of the largest killers of firefighters, heart attacks.

Aggressive fire suppression, using overwhelming force with all of the available tools, reduces the overall risks to firefighters and the public, while also minimizing long term smoke exposure to communities.

The alternatives to helicopters have their own risks. I was on a fire in Colorado where the Incident Commander was very helicopter risk-adverse, and wanted to minimize their use. We needed to place a radio repeater on a mountain top and he vetoed using a helicopter, ordering that a pack train of horses be used to haul the equipment instead.

On the way up the mountain on a hiking trail, something spooked the horses and it turned into a rodeo. The horses bucked and ran, shedding their loads of expensive radios which tumbled down the steep slope. The equipment was destroyed.

If humans had been the cargo, it is likely that there would have been some serious injuries.

It took a couple of days to obtain a replacement repeater, which was then flown to the mountain. In the meantime, communications on the fire were not adequate, which compromised the safety of the firefighters.

 

The following is from an article in the Redding, California Record Searchlight

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Timothy Ingalsbee says he owes his life to a firefighting helicopter.

In 1990, when he was a scout perched on a house-sized boulder overlooking a blaze in Washington’s North Cascades National Park, a shift in wind pushed wildfire uphill to him. Encircled in flames, he radioed for a helicopter to drop 2,000 gallons of water directly on top of him.

The deluge from a massive twin-rotor helicopter knocked down the fire and saved his life, he said. Still, given the deadly risks to those aboard, he wonders whether helicopters should be used to fight wildfires in the backcountry.

Over the past four years, four helicopters have crashed while fighting wildfires in the north state. Three of the crashes were fatal, killing 12 people in all. That includes the nine deaths in last summer’s Iron 44 crash near Weaverville, among the worst aviation crashes in terms of lives lost in the U.S. Forest Service’s history.

Another firefighter also died last week when he fell 200 feet from a helicopter during a routine rapelling exercise as part of the fight of the Backbone Fire in the Trinity Alps Wilderness.

Now the executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology (FUSEE) based in Eugene, Ore., Ingalsbee said there is no tool as versatile as a helicopter in fighting fire. But flying them over blazes burning deep in the woods increases the chances of their crashing.

“Using helicopters in this steep, mountainous terrain is fraught with peril,” Ingalsbee said.

Useful tool

As people movers, cargo carriers and flying fire hydrants, helicopters have become a major part of modern firefights.

“They are one of our biggest assets,” said Robert “Buck” Silva, fire management officer for the Modoc National Forest.

Shuttled into fires by helicopters, “helitak” crews may slide down ropes to reach the ground.

It was during a rappelling training session that Tom “T.J.” Marovich, 20, of Hayward fell and died last week at the Backbone Fire’s temporary helicopter base in Willow Creek.

The pain of his friend’s death still stinging, Cody Sandberg, assistant chief at the Adin Fire Protection District in Lassen County, said helicopters provide firefighters a huge advantage.

“There is going to be a risk in the air or on the ground,” said Sandberg, who has also worked with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection in fighting wildfire.

Often spending much of the fire season in the small town, Marovich had been a volunteer for Adin Fire for four years. Sandberg said Marovich accepted the risk of riding in and rappelling from a helicopter along with the other dangers of the job.

Compared to hiking or driving on winding forest roads, flying in a helicopter can bring a firefighter to a blaze in a matter of minutes rather than hours.

“They are, unfortunately, worth the risk,” Sandberg said.

When to fight fire

Ingalsbee and other critics of the Forest Service’s wildfire management said they don’t doubt helicopters’ usefulness.

“When you need to put a fire out, a helicopter is a great tool,” said Rich Fairbanks, a former Forest Service firefighter and a current fire specialist with The Wilderness Society, a national conservation group.

But examining the dangers of firefighting helicopters leads to the underlying questions of when and where wildfires should be fought, Fairbanks and Ingalsbee said.

Three of the four crashes over the past four years involved helicopters flying over fires in federally designated wilderness.

Fairbanks said fires in wilderness could be allowed to burn to rocky ridges and rivers, where they’ll go out naturally. That way, expensive and risky helicopters wouldn’t have to be used.

“Is spending this money and killing some young folks a good idea?” he said.

But such a “let it burn” attitude doesn’t take into account the health risks brought by the smoke from wildfires, the chief reason cited by the Forest Service officials as they aggressively fought the 6,324-acre Backbone Fire.

Forest Service officials at the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, the state’s regional office and the Washington, D.C., headquarters declined to discuss the use of helicopters on wildfire last week, saying they wanted to wait until after Marovich’s funeral. The funeral is set for Thursday in Hayward.

On the Klamath National Forest, Riva Duncan, deputy forest fire chief in charge of aviation, said the dangers of using helicopters are weighed before each mission. She said fire officials fill out a risk assessment form when deciding whether to send up the copters. A helicopter pilot, being the most familiar with their ship and skills, also can veto any mission.

Duncan said the officials aim to make sure that each flight is safe, effective and efficient.

“If we can’t meet those criteria,” she said, “we need to think about doing something else.”

The National Transportation Safety Board said Friday the Sikoirsky S-61 that crashed on the Backbone fire on the Klamath National Forest in northern California on July 17 hit a dip tank, or Heliwell, while it was refilling. The NTSB report said witnesses saw the helicopter hit the tank.

From the Redding Searchlight:

During liftoff, the helicopter experienced a “droop condition,” the NTSB report says, and witnesses saw the copter hit the tank.

The Sikorsky banked until its main rotor blades struck the ground, the report says.

The left, main landing gear was sheared off and the helicopter rolled over onto its side. The hard landing damaged the main rotor blades, the fuselage and tail rotor, the report says. A small amount of fuel spilled, but there was no fire.

Both pilots were able to walk away from the accident, but one suffered serious injuries.

The final NTSB report on the accident is still pending.

Another helicopter-related accident occurred on the same fire on July 21 when Thomas Marovich, 20, of Hayward California incurred fatal injuries when falling 200 feet while performing routine rappel proficiency skill training at the Backbone Helibase.

On Saturday we attended the open house commemorating 50 years of service by the Custer, South Dakota helitack crew.

There were quite a few people there. More than they expected.

They had to make an emergency run to pick up an additional two dozen brats and buns.

The Type 1 helicopter got a lot of attention.

The local Custer helicopter arrived late to the party after being assigned to a local fire.

There were people at the open house that worked on the helitack crew decades ago. For example, Dave Sisk was on the crew around 1972 and drove over from Cody, Wyoming.

Beginning in approximately 2000 the helitack crew became interagency, supported not only by the U. S. Forest Service, but also by the National Park Service and possibly other agencies as well.

HERE is a link to an interesting article written by the Oshkosh air show that provides more details about this ugly (some say) but beautifully effective  firefighting machine.