DC-10 Tanker 911 on the Robbers Fire in California July 15, 2012. Photo by David Wilson. (Click to see a larger version.)
With the DC-10 being activated again, I am reminded of the shortage of air tankers during the Myrtle fire in the Black Hills of South Dakota a few weeks ago, which during the first six hours had no large air tankers. On the radio a conversation between two people in the Operations section could be heard discussing the no-show of the air show. I could sense the frustration in their voices. One of them suggested that they consider requesting the DC-10 Very Large Air Tanker, but they did not know with certainty the nearest air tanker base where it could land and reload with retardant.
They knew that the aircraft is too large for most of the dozens of air tanker bases, since it has a wing span of around 160 feet and a weight of about a half million pounds. The physical layout of the bases and the runway, taxiways, and ramps at the airports are not designed for the size and weight of such a large air tanker.
However, there are eight bases that can accommodate the DC-10 in the western United States, according to Pam Baltimore, an Acting Public Affairs Officer for the U.S. Forest Service in Washington D.C.
SBD – San Bernardino, CA
MCC – McClellen – CA (Sacramento)
MWH – Moses Lake, WA
BOI – Boise, ID
IWA – Mesa-Gateway, AZ (Phoenix)
HIF – Hill AFB, UT
HLN – Helena, MT
CPR – Casper, WY
When contemplating using a DC-10 air tanker on a fire, aviation personnel consider, in addition to the cost per delivered gallon, the fact that it can cruise at 564 MPH, and the retardant capacity of 11,600 gallons, equivalent to almost six P2V or four BAe-146 air tankers, which carry about 2,000 and 3,000 gallons, respectively.
The Myrtle Fire at 4:12 p.m. MT, July 19, 2012, looking north across Wind Cave National Park. Photo by Bill Gabbert
Since the Myrtle fire burned over 10,000 acres and racked up $4,000,000 in suppression costs, land managers in the Black Hills of South Dakota have become more proactive and aggressive in organizing to fight wildfires. The agencies have been attacking new fires with enough resources to stop the spread within the first burning period. And it has not been easy in all cases. While dozens of lightning-caused fires have burned less than two acres, a few fires have burned several hundred acres but were stopped the same day.
In addition — they have beefed up the number of ground resources available for initial and extended attack of new fires; have increased the number of helicopters available at Custer; on most days there have been a couple of heavy air tankers available at Rapid City; and today they announced that fire managers from the Black Hills National Forest, the National Park Service, and the South Dakota Division of Wildland Fire Suppression entered into an agreement to order a Type 2 Incident Management Team to operate a Command and Mobilization Center. The Team will be assisting with initial attack of fires that grow beyond the capabilities of local resources; assisting the local units by tracking and handling the administrative processes of incoming personnel, crews and equipment; and ordering and resupplying the tools, equipment and other items to ensure that firefighters are ready to go to the next fire.
These are all welcome improvements, and the land managers should be commended for their success in dealing with the many new fires over the last eight days.
This was not necessarily the case when the Myrtle fire started at 1:30 p.m. MT on July 19. From the radio traffic I heard, the first large air tankers were requested at approximately 3:40 p.m. and I saw the first one arrive over the fire at 7:14 p.m. By that time, the Type 1 Incident Management Team, which is used for managing the largest and most complex fires, had already been ordered. I don’t know if a squadron of air tankers over the fire in the first 30 minutes would have made a big difference, but for whatever reason, the fixed wing aerial resources were not available to assist the firefighters on the ground.
As we frequently say, air tankers don’t put out fires, boots on the ground do. But air tankers and helicopters can greatly enhance their effectiveness. An investment in flight time and retardant within the first 30 minutes can, in some cases, save the taxpayers millions of dollars and reduce the loss of lives and property. Having only nine large air tankers available on long term contracts for the entire country makes this objective difficult to achieve. Ten years ago we had 53.
Dr. Gabbert’s 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…
What is left of the Myrtle Fire Incident Command Post at Custer High School, July 26, 2012. The fire is contained and has been turned over to a smaller Incident Management Team, a Type 3 team. Photo by Bill Gabbert (click to enlarge)
When the Myrtle fire, which is now contained, was threatening structures between Pringle and Hot Springs, South Dakota, many firefighters were assigned to structure protection. Most homeowners who evacuate have little understanding of what will happen around their house while they are hunkering down in a motel or school gym. Firefighters, when time permits, will do far more than spray water on the structure, as Lynn and Gardner Gray discovered when they visited their home near Pringle the day after they evacuated.
Jim Kent, a columnist for the Rapid City Journal wrote about the Gray’s experience in today’s edition. Here is an excerpt:
…During a return visit the following day, Lynn encountered four firefighters taking what she considered extraordinary steps to fully protect her property.
Once the Myrtle Fire moved out of range and the couple were back in their house, Lynn insisted I tour the property so she could point out the care and attention given by complete strangers.
From removing the propane tank on the Grays’ outdoor grill, to fully sealing their garage door and saturating 6 cords of wood stacked against the side of their home, the firefighters left no combustion hazard to chance.
They even took down a flammable decorative flag and repositioned a wood-handle rake before digging a protective trench around the property. In fact, the list of what the firefighters actually did is too long to include here.
And speaking of public relations, Craig Bobzien, the Forest Supervisor of the Black Hills National Forest in South Dakota, met with a group of citizens from the Edgemont area who had concerns about how the White Draw fire was fought. Mr. Bobzien explained in a Rapid City Journal article attributed to him that he had heard about some complaints in the media and wanted to hear them first hand.
White Draw Fire, June 29, 2012 Photo by Bill Gabbert
Those citizens from the Edgemont have been generating a lot of publicity about how some of them thought the firefighters could have stopped the 9,000-acre rapidly spreading timber fire in late June if only they had paid more attention to the locals. Previously, on July 6 South Dakota Senator John Thune traveled to Edgemont with reporters and photographers in tow to also meet with those citizens. This was the fire on which a military C-130 MAFFS air tanker crashed, killing four members of the crew and injuring two others.
Myrtle fire, near Hwy. 385 and Beaver Creek Road, July 23, 2012. Photo by Bill Gabbert
Thanks to the great efforts by firefighters, and favorable weather, the incident management team is calling the Myrtle fire in the Black Hills of South Dakota 75 percent contained. The size has not changed in the last few days, and remains at 10,080 acres. Monday evening I visited the fire and saw no major fire activity, only scattered smokes.
Two weather stations near the fire measured 0.28″ and 0.30″ of rain between 9 and 11 p.m. on Monday, but it was a mixed blessing, in that it came with a great deal of lightning, as you can see in these photos.
Investigators determined that the likely cause of the fire was a U.S. Forest Service road grader that was performing road maintenance. The belief is that the metal blade fractured a rock on the road surface igniting the grassy fuels on the roadside.
“A Careless Match Destroys”. A sign within the Myrtle fire, July 23, 2012. Photo by Bill Gabbert
All evacuations and road closures have been lifted, and electrical power as been restored to primary residences in the area. Wind Cave National Park plans to reopen today.
A map of the fire current as of Monday night can be found HERE. While it came very close, the fire still has not burned anything within Wind Cave National Park.
Sunset over the Myrtle fire, looking across Wind Cave National Park, July 23, 2012. Photo by Bill Gabbert
A helicopter dropped off a couple of passengers at the intersection of Song Dog Road and Argyle Road.
Today I spent several hours on the south end of the Myrtle fire in the Black Hills of South Dakota where firefighters were successfully conducting an extensive burning operation in Cold Brook Canyon and Song Dog Road. They usually had the wind at their backs and the milder weather along with a little rain yesterday minimized any extreme fire behavior, but the fire still burned extremely well. It only took a few drops out of the drip torches to convince the fire to spread quickly from the firelines and roads into the timber. The temperature maxed out at about 90 while the relative humidity was in the high 20s.
Tom Contreras (on the right), the Forest Supervisor of the Angeles National Forest in Southern California drove up in a vehicle on Argyle Road and said hello. He explained that he was representing the Regional Forester of the local Rocky Mountain Region. (How do I get that job?)
Firefighters enjoy burning operations. It’s not as physically exhausting as constructing fireline, for example, and it can be very satisfying to conduct a well-planned and skillfully executed burnout. You can very quickly see the effects of your efforts, whether they are positive, or if you’re chasing spot fires across the fireline.
Firefighter, armed with a pine bough and a piece of sharpened metal attached to the end of a stick. With the exception of having better chain saws, the job of a hot shot crewperson has not changed much in the last 60 years.
Two of the crews working on this operation today were the Sawtooth and the San Juan Hotshots. It is always a pleasure to see such highly trained and experienced crews work. This was not a simple burning operation, and it involved igniting some distance away from the firelines to draw in the heat that was later generated closer to the lines. These crews did it as if they do it every day, with very little verbal direction from the supervisors. They know their jobs. The only raised voice I heard was when someone running a drip torch completed her assignment, stopped to extinguish the torch with her back to what she had just lit, and didn’t realize that 3-foot flames were heading her direction and were about 6 feet away. Someone said “GET OUT OF THERE!”. And she did. Safely. No harm done.
The video above is a slide show of a series of photographs shot in very quick succession while a member of the San Juan Hotshots used a flare pistol to ignite areas along Cold Creek Canyon during a burnout operation on the Myrtle Fire, July 22, 2012. The photos were taken by Bill Gabbert.
Tanker 43 and the retardant tanks at Rapid City Air Tanker Base
On Saturday we had the opportunity to visit the Air Tanker Base at the Rapid City Regional Airport. The crew, led by Base Manager Gordon Schaffer, was busy keeping three P2V air tankers reloaded with retardant as they returned from fires, paused on the ramp to get another 2,000 gallons of the red stuff, and took off again.
Tanker 07 arrives, needing another another 2,000 gallons of retardant.
On Saturday the three air tankers working out of the base were from Neptune, Tankers 43 and 07, and 48 from Minden. The staff at the base consisted of the Base Manager, the Ramp Manager, a radio operator/dispatcher/office-assistant, and a 2-person reloading crew. In addition, there were three to four mechanics checking the aircraft every time they reloaded. The mechanics work for Neptune and Minden, the companies that operate the air tankers which are contracted to the federal government. The Minden mechanic said that when the tanker relocates to another air tanker base, which happens frequently, he usually travels with the aircraft, and a chase vehicle with additional mechanics and equipment follows on the ground, sometimes arriving a day or two later.
A mechanic checks the tires and landing gear on Tanker 07 while it is being reloaded.
On Sunday, July 22, two of the three air tanker crews will be on mandatory days off, and another will come off of their days off, resulting in Tankers 45 and 48 being available at the base beginning at 9 a.m.
All of these photos were taken by Bill Gabbert.
Tanker 43 lands at the Rapid City Regional Airport.
Map showing the APPROXIMATE location, in red, of the Myrtle Fire at 11 p.m., July 20, 2012 (Click to enlarge.)
The Myrtle Fire, between Pringle and Hot Springs, South Dakota grew substantially on Saturday while being pushed by strong winds coming out of thunderstorms. The approximate size, from the map we constructed, is 11,000 acres. According to the incident management team on Saturday morning the fire is 15 percent contained.
Some areas on the east side of the fire received about 0.3 inches of rain late in the day on Friday, but much of the fire remained dry as thunderstorms passed through the area.
Today there are two large air tankers working the fire, both P2Vs — Tankers 07 and 43. A third, Tanker 48, is expected to arrive later on Saturday.
It was Tanker 43 that had the engine problem just after taking off on Friday, which caused the crew to jettison the load of retardant so they could return and land safely. The engine has been repaired and it is back in service.
Myrtle fire as seen from Cold Springs Road at noon, July 20, 2012. Photo by Richard Krier
A Type 1 Incident Management Team, led by Incident Commander Bill Hahnenberg, assumed command of the fire at 6 a.m. on Saturday. There are currently 249 personnel assigned to the fire and additional resources will be arriving throughout the day.
Some areas are still under evacuation notices. More information about evacuations can be found on InciWeb.
The weather Saturday afternoon will be less severe than Friday, with a high in the fire area of 92, a minimum relative humidity of 31 percent, and winds out of the northwest at 5 to 9 mph. There is a 34 percent chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. Sunday’s weather will be about the same.
A video/slide show of Tanker 07, a P2V, dropping on the Myrtle Fire. All photos were taken near Rifle Pit Road on July 19, 2012 at 8:24 p.m. by Bill Gabbert of Wildfire Today. And no, it did not crash into the trees; it exited the area safely and went back to Rapid City for the night.
We will update this article throughout the day on Friday as new information becomes available.
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UPDATE at 3:29 p.m., July 20, 2012:
The reason that Tanker 43, one of the two P2V air tankers assigned to the Myrtle fire, is not in operation, as we reported below, is that the 50-year old aircraft experienced a loss of power in one of its two main engines when taking off with a load of retardant at Rapid City Regional Airport. The Rapid City Journal reports that the tanker had to jettison its 18,000-pound load of retardant just after lifting off in order to safely remain airborne and return for a landing. Some of the retardant landed on two runways and a taxiway, closing the runways for about 40 minutes. Two inbound commercial flights orbited waiting for fire trucks and people with brooms to remove the retardant, but they eventually had to divert to Casper, Wyoming to refuel before they were finally allowed to land.
The retardant is very slippery and vehicles and aircraft should not attempt to drive or land on roads or runways covered with the chemical.
These very old air tankers that were discarded by the military 40 years ago have 18-cylinder radial piston engines with many, many moving parts. They frequently have a variety of problems that put the pilots in danger. Thankfully, the air crew survived this life-threatening emergency.
There is only one large air tanker working on the fire right now. There were two, both P2Vs, Tankers 07 and 43, but 43 is down with a mechanical issue. There was a rumor that Tanker 40, the jet-powered BAe-146 was dispatched from Missoula to the fire, but it got diverted to another fire in Montana while en route.
The DC-10 Very Large Air Tanker, which carries as much retardant as five P2V air tankers, 11,600 gallons, was laid off Monday by the U.S. Forest Service. There is currently a very significant shortage of air tankers. We only have 9, plus 3 that are borrowed temporarily from the state of Alaska. That number, 9, is down from the 53 we had in 2002. That is not enough to provide quick initial attack on new fires to keep them small, or enough to support large fires when the small ones become huge due in part, sometimes, to a lack of aggressive initial attack on new fires using overwhelming force. Air tankers do not put out fires, but under some conditions can slow them down enough to allow ground-based firefighters to contain them. The DC-10 is not the perfect tool for every fire, but it works very well on a large number of them. A P2V, BAe-146, or a Single Engine Air Tanker are not perfect for every fire either.
When the air tanker fleet has been reduced from 44 to 9, it’s an All-Hands-On-Deck situation. The DC-10 should not have been laid off from its Call When Needed Contract. There are also two other Very Large Air Tankers that are not being used at all; another DC-10 and a 747.
Air Tanker 07, a P2V, the only air tanker working on the Myrtle fire, while evacuations are in progress. Photo July 19, 2012 by Bill Gabbert
Hot Springs Fire Department was dispatched at 12:52 p.m. to assist the Minnekata Fire Department (west of Hot Springs) with voluntary evacuations “above Cottonwood”, the dispatcher said.
Only four of the seven military Modular Airborne FireFighting Systems C-130 air tankers are mobilized. If they were assigned to the Myrtle fire, they could not reload at the Rapid City Air Tanker base because the U.S. Forest Service is dragging its feet on approving the base for MAFFS air tankers, in spite of the fact that the base has been approved by the Air Force. MAFFS air tankers have been commonly used since the early 1970s, but the USFS has not gotten around to approving Rapid City for their use during the last 37 years.
Wildfires are very difficult to suppress even when competent leaders make excellent decisions and funding levels approved by Congress and the President are adequate. When the opposite is the case, it puts a tremendous burden on firefighters who are doing the best they can under very difficult conditions.
(End of update.)
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UPDATE at 12:45 p.m. July 20, 2012:
The Myrtle Fire is very close to Wind Cave National Park, but as far as I know has not yet burned into the park, which is closed to the public, of course. On Thursday the staff gave pre-evacuation notices to all park residents. Today the power has been shut off and hand-held radio batteries are being charged off a generator that is running the gas pump. The high today will reach 99 degrees, the minimum relative humidity will be 21 percent, and the winds will be 10-14 mph with gusts to 18 out of the east and northeast. These conditions are conducive to significant fire spread to the west and southwest. HERE is a link to detailed weather forecast information for the specific area in which the fire is burning.
(End of update.)
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Myrtle Fire map at 2:00 am, July 20, 2012. Credit: Incident Management Team. Each square is a Section; one mile by one mile. Click to enlarge. Map of the Myrtle Fire, showing heat detected by a satellite at 2:35 a.m., July 20, 2012. MODIS/Google. Click to see larger version.
Here is some information provided by the Incident Management Team at 10:04 a.m on Friday:
The Myrtle Fire, reported yesterday, July 19, 2012 at 1:30pm approximately 1 mile east of Pringle, SD, has grown to 7500 acres and is 5 percent contained.
Residents north of Argyle road to highway 385 have been placed on evacuation notice. For more information on evacuations, please call Frank at (605) 673-8307. Argyle road remains open.
The American Red Cross has opened an emergency evacuation center [in Custer] at the Armory/Custer Middle School.
Wind Cave National Park has been closed until further notice.
Resources continue to arrive on scene and a type 1 [Incident Management] team [which is used for managing large, complex wildfires] will arrive today.
“Right now we are concerned about the area south of 385 and Pringle,” said Mike Carter, Emergency Coordinator for Custer County. “We have no concerns about Custer,” he said.
The public can go to Denver from Custer via Highway 385 and Highway 89 south to Denver.
People can get to Hot Springs from Custer- by going south on 385 and 89 to Minnekahta Junction.
Approximately 300 firefighter personnel are on scene.
Myrtle fire, July 19, 2012. Photo by Brian Carrico. Click to enlarge.
