Forest Service has night-flying helicopter; first time in 40 years
Forest Service has night-flying helicopter; first time in 40 years
05 June 2013
published by www.whittierdailynews.com
USA — Pressure from local legislators forces the federal agency’s hand
For the first time in nearly 40 years, the U.S. Forest Service has a night-flying helicopter in its fleet to fight Southern California wildfires.
The helicopter and its specially-trained crew will be housed out of Fox Field in Lancaster, according to the agency.
“Night flying operations will provide an aggressive agency initial attack while better ensuring public safety, minimizing overall fire costs and lessening impacts to communities,” said U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell on Tuesday.
The agency had announced it would resume its own night-flying operations in August, saying it needed time to train pilots. The agency stopped making night-drops on wildfires in the 1970s after a tragic helicopter crash in the Angeles National Forest. During the 40-year span, it has relied on other agencies to supply night-flying helicopters to fight major wildfires in the Angeles, Cleveland, San Bernardino and Los Padres national forests.
The Forest Service was criticized by local politicians and residents for not using night-dropping aircraft during the 2009 Station Fire above La Crescenta and in Acton, which resulted in the deaths of two firefighters, destroyed 89 homes and burned through 160,000 acres. Many, including Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, and Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, characterized the federal agency’s response as slow
and inadequate. Some said the fire could’ve been contained much sooner had night-flying aircraft been used.
Los Angeles County Fire Department and the Los Angeles City Fire Department have been flying water- and retardant-dropping helicopters at night for decades, with great success. This past week, the county has used nighttime water drops to fight the 50-square-mile Powerhouse Fire that destroyed six homes in the rugged Angeles National forest north of Santa Clarita and near Lancaster.
Forest Service officials have been reluctant to fly in darkness for safety reasons.
But Schiff and Sen. Dianne Feinstein have been asking for the Forest Service, a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to get their own night-flying equipment and personnel. Even after the decision was reached last August, the Forest Service elected not to use the county’s night-flying helicopters and crews on the Williams Fire last September, which burned more than 4,000 acres in the Angeles north of Azusa, forcing the evacuation of 1,100 permanent forest residents and overnight campers.
A former supervisor of the Angeles, Mike Rogers, said the advantage to applying water and/or retardant on a fire at night is significant. “The fire tends to lay down as the sun sets. The fire is much easier to drop on at night. There is not that much of a flaming front. You can make big gains,” he told this newspaper last September.
Los Angeles County Fire Battalion Chief Mark Savage said his agency recognizes the advantages to nighttime fire suppression, which is why the county made its night helicopters and pilots available to the Forest Service, should it call on them.
“We will never know for certain if night flying could have extinguished the Station Fire in those critical early hours, but adding this capability will give us a better chance in future wildfires to protect residents’ houses, precious natural resources and, most importantly, lives,” Schiff said in a prepared statement. He said the restoration of night-flying helicopters by the Forest Service was “long overdue.”
According to the Government Accountability Office report on the federal response to the 2009 blaze, the agency concluded that the Forest Service failed to use all potentially available aircraft early in the fire and that it needed to develop a better first-strike plan, Schiff said.
As a result, the Forest Service said it would expand service to include night-flying helicopters and a fixed-wing aircraft. So far, only the night helicopter is currently available.
Costs of fire suppression now consume half of the entire Forest Service budget. In fiscal year 1991, fire activities accounted for about 13 percent of the total agency budget. In 2012, it was more than 40 percent. Since 2000, the 10-year average cost has risen almost every year from a little more than $540 million to more than $1 billion in 2010 and beyond, according to testimony from Tidwell Tuesday in Congress.
The cost of the specially equipped helicopter and trained crew was not made known by the Forest Service.
