“It’s a war”: California turns to new, high-tech helicopters to battle wildfires

Final summer time, California suffered probably the most savage hearth years in its historical past. Drought and scorching temperatures turbocharged fires that had been extra excessive than ever. Two of the most important fires in state historical past laid siege to greater than one million acres in Northern California, burning dangerously near Lake Tahoe. Firefighters did not have a time without work for months. Hearth chiefs warned there weren’t sufficient plane to go round. “It is a conflict,” one informed us. So hearth chiefs from Southern California stole a web page from the army: taking the struggle to the evening. As we first reported final fall, a fleet of high-tech helicopters fought wildfires 24/7. And for the primary time, the large Chinook – you have seen them in different conflict zones –led the evening assault. It was an $18 million pilot program – that the fireplace chiefs hope will probably be a game-changer.

The U.S. Forest Service was already short-staffed when the Caldor Hearth exploded final August, churning towards South Lake Tahoe. Hundreds of residents had been pressured to flee. To the north, the Dixie Hearth rampaged for months, demolishing historic gold rush cities. The drought-parched forests burn so scorching they generate their very own hearth tornados. Between the 2 infernos, greater than 8,000 bone-weary firefighters fought a relentless battle. Orange County Hearth Chief Brian Fennessy – a former Hotshot who has been combating fires in Southern California for 44 years – informed us there was no extra give within the system.  

Brian Fennessy: These fires get so giant that there aren’t sufficient firefighters, aren’t sufficient airplanes, helicopters, bulldozers.

Invoice Whitaker: I might assume that may be worrisome .

Brian Fennessy: You realize, we’re to the purpose the place if we had been to ship rather more, we will have firehouses which can be empty. And for the people who we have sworn to serve, you already know, our taxpayers, it isn’t acceptable to have firehouses empty for any size of time. 

Invoice Whitaker: Every little thing is stretched to the restrict.

Brian Fennessy: Every little thing is stretched. 

We met Brian Fennessy on the Truckee Airfield, about 45 miles from the fires. After Caldor destroyed the city of Grizzly Flats, Fennessy volunteered to ship his new  firefighting choppers north. Extra like flying computer systems with rotors on prime, they’re referred to as the Fast Response Pressure. Fennessy calls the fleet, “The Hammer.”  

Brian Fennessy: That is The Hammer!

Invoice Whitaker: So if somebody calls 911   

Brian Fennessy: If one thing breaks out   

Invoice Whitaker: You hit it with every thing you have bought, these massive guys and knock it out.   

Brian Fennessy: In case of fireplace, break glass.

The star of the present is the large Chinook – this one used to fly in Afghanistan for the U.S. Military. It has been retrofitted to struggle a unique conflict, dropping water or retardant. Now, Fennessy informed us they’ve this highly effective new software to take that struggle to the evening.   

Brian Fennessy: The flexibility to put retardant line, to proceed to drop hearth retardant after sunset, that is a primary.

Invoice Whitaker: That is gonna change the best way you struggle fires? 

Brian Fennessy: We hope so.  

The Chinook can drop 3,000 gallons. That is about 10 instances what most firefighting choppers drop. No larger helicopter has ever fought fires at evening.

Wayne Coulson, the CEO of Coulson Aviation — which constructed the fleet — is a pioneer in evening firefighting. He confirmed us the specially-designed tank. Computer systems management the tank’s doorways, opening at exact GPS factors.

Invoice Whitaker: You’ll be able to zero in precisely on the spot you need to drop? 

Wayne Coulson: We are able to fly the plane to these GPS factors and the doorways will robotically open and shut between these two factors.  

Coulson informed us it is a extra surgical strike. Flame retardant might be dropped in virtually straight strains. At evening, there’s an added benefit: the fireplace often dies down. 

Invoice Whitaker: Is that a greater time to hit the fireplace?

Wayne Coulson: It completely is. That is when it is its weakest.

Invoice Whitaker: Often its weakest?

Wayne Coulson: That is the time to assault an enemy, at its weakest time limit. 

The Fast Response Pressure works in pairs. The Chinook will get its orders from this plane. Consider it as a visitors management tower — however within the air.  Sporting evening imaginative and prescient goggles, Orange County Air Assault officer Joel Lane makes use of infrared cameras to see via the smoke to map the perfect targets for the Chinook. 

Lane has spent the final 23 years within the air. Improved evening imaginative and prescient know-how has revived evening firefighting — most businesses halted evening flying after a mid-air collision within the Nineteen Seventies. Lane informed us the know-how means they’ll assault fires at any hour.

Joel Lane: If you happen to time a hearth let’s say for one minute, and its 2 acres, in two minutes, it isn’t gonna be 4, it is gonna be 9. And in three minutes, it is gonna be 27.

Invoice Whitaker: And the fireplace’s going quicker.

Joel Lane: And the one factor that stops that’s pace and power.

Invoice Whitaker: And that is what you get with the plane?

Joel Lane: That’s precisely what you get with the plane.    

In early September we flew with Britt Coulson, Wayne’s son and tech wizard at Coulson Aviation. He turned on the highly effective thermal imaging digital camera and the Caldor Hearth burst into view. 

Britt Coulson: These flames are greater than the timber.

As we flew nearer, we watched a fountain of flames exploding over the treetops. There was hearth in every single place, each level of sunshine a probably hellish new blaze.    

Britt Coulson: The embers that come up when it is actually intense, they’re gonna spot out far forward.

Zooming in, Britt Coulson confirmed us a spot hearth that had leapt over a containment line dug by firefighters.   

Wayne Coulson: So for instance in the event that they had been attempting to catch it alongside that ridgeline there.

Invoice Whitaker: This has already jumped over?   

Wayne Coulson: It is jumped over. With out one of these know-how, they’re by no means gonna see that.

We circled the fires at 13,000 ft. Beneath us, we noticed the command helicopter with Joel Lane. A thousand ft beneath that’s the place the Chinook flies. Lane directs the large chopper to the drop zone. From our perch, we may virtually depend the timber as we flew over a blackened panorama. Then we noticed boats, docks and homes: South Lake Tahoe.   

Wayne Coulson: That is South Lake Tahoe airport proper there. And you then bought the fireplace proper there.

Invoice Whitaker: Proper behind it. 

Wayne Coulson: So there, you have bought all the person embers developing.

Invoice Whitaker: That is burning closely.

Wayne Coulson: Yeah.

The Chinook sweeps throughout the flames, drops its water, then heads to the closest lake to refill. In contrast to fixed-wing craft that should return to base, the Chinook can refill wherever. Hovering like some prehistoric chicken, it sucks up 3,000 gallons in 90 seconds.

This does not come low cost. A helitanker can price as much as $15 million, and $8,000 an hour to function. However Joel Lane informed us it is cash properly spent.

He informed us concerning the Tuna Hearth, which ignited in dry brush close to Malibu final July. It was promptly doused by a fast response Chinook at a value of a number of hundred thousand {dollars}, a fraction of what it will have price if the hearth had gotten uncontrolled. If you happen to by no means heard of the Tuna Hearth, says Lane, that is a win. 

Joel Lane: So the 10-acre hearth that you just—that we catch 98% of the time, it is by no means gonna make the paper, you are by no means gonna hear about it. Public wakes up the following day and until they drive by it, they by no means realize it occurred. And we do this very efficiently, particularly in Southern California.

Invoice Whitaker: The funds that you just’re laying out, that, sure, it is costly to have these plane however it’s dearer in the event you do not catch the fireplace. 

Joel Lane: Exponentially.

Invoice Whitaker: Exponentially dearer?  

Joel Lane: Appropriate.

In Northern California, the Dixie Hearth grew to become the biggest single hearth in state historical past. Firefighters fought the Caldor Hearth for months. The price? Greater than a half-billion {dollars} and climbing. But, throughout our journey final August, the helitankers flew just one out of 4 nights. We questioned, why? So did Orange County Hearth Chief Brian Fennessy, who had despatched his finest tools to struggle the state’s worst fires. 

Invoice Whitaker: Did they not put it to work as quickly as you introduced it up right here?   

Brian Fennessy: Not not initially, no.   

Invoice Whitaker: Why not?   

Brian Fennessy: It took a whole lot of— they did not have any familiarization with you already know flying at evening. And so we needed to decelerate.

Invoice Whitaker: However it’s confirmed.

Brian Fennessy: And we’re in the midst of chaos and uncertainty and houses are burning, that does not work. 

Within the week we had been there, the Caldor Hearth grew by 40,000 acres. Maybe as alarming: we found the decelerate was fueled, partly, by infighting between the U.S. Forest Service, which oversees federal lands, and Cal Hearth, liable for state forests. Chief Fennessy informed us he twice provided up his new fleet, and twice met with discord and confusion.

We noticed the forest service log off on selections, solely to have them modified by Cal Hearth. Firefighters informed us the businesses disagreed about evening missions, radio frequencies, methods to feed firefighters. They each challenged the credentials of the Orange County flight crews.    

Invoice Whitaker: That does not look like probably the most environment friendly option to deal with the assets, particularly within the face of an enormous hearth? 

Brian Fennessy: Extraordinarily irritating. We now have a system, the Hearth Service, the place we honor one another’s {qualifications}. Yeah, it’s irritating as a result of you already know when there is a delay in accepting these {qualifications} to the detriment of the general public, yeah, that is a priority.     

When Chief Fennessy first despatched his choppers, two crews sat on the tarmac for 48 hours. Fed up, he protested in an e mail, which we obtained via a Freedom of Info request.

“I do not assume the general public will perceive this nonsense,” he wrote. “Particularly if our crews are grounded and there aren’t any aviation questions of safety to deal with.”

Cal Hearth informed us the crew test was a normal security process and that smoke and wind prevented flying some nights. Chief Fennessy informed us solely when he threatened to take his choppers again south, did the businesses give the inexperienced mild to fly.

Nonetheless, Brian Fennessy and two different Southern California hearth chiefs had been so dismayed the fleet was getting used so little, they complained in an e mail to the Forest Service: “there was ample alternative for the protected constant operation of the [Quick Reaction Force] each in the course of the day and at evening, however this didn’t happen.”     

Brian Fennessy: Properly I’ve an expectation that if I’ll mortgage you, you already know, my stuff ‘trigger you are having an emergency, you are going to put it to work. If you happen to’re not going to place it to work, ship it residence ‘trigger I’ve bought work and I’ve bought residents right here to guard. We’ll go to work.

Fennessy informed us the depth of those fires calls for a brand new method to combating them. 

Brian Fennessy: I would heard from businesses on the highest degree, that there was not a priority for aviation security. It was extra of a priority for–

Invoice Whitaker: Forms….?

Brian Fennessy: You stated it.    

Invoice Whitaker: The fires are altering …

Brian Fennessy: The fires are altering. We have to be extra—

Invoice Whitaker: The local weather is altering   

Brian Fennessy: Oh— we— we have got to be extra nimble. We have to have the ability to pivot in a short time —

Invoice Whitaker: Fires aren’t going to attend so that you can get your act collectively.   

Brian Fennessy: No, they are not.   

We repeatedly requested Cal Hearth and the Forest Service why the night-flying choppers weren’t used extra. Weeks later, they did get collectively to subject a joint assertion about their “shared mission.”

They wrote: “Every hearth presents its personal distinctive challenges and hearth managers stand shoulder-to-shoulder day-after-day to beat these hurdles…” 

The day after we left, Chief Fennessy took his Fast Response Pressure again south the place the Santa Ana winds and the variety of fires had been selecting up. Fennessy informed us, with fires getting extra excessive, Cal Hearth and the Forest Service cannot afford to sideline the Massive Hammer.

Brian Fennessy: These plane are being credited with saving numerous property as a result of they had been obtainable at evening to do this.   

Invoice Whitaker: And you have confirmed it.   

Brian Fennessy: We have confirmed it. It is a program that I consider must develop not simply to Northern California, however all through the West.   

Invoice Whitaker: What is the resistance? Why the resistance?   

Brian Fennessy: You realize, my intestine tells me primarily based on many years of expertise within the Hearth Service that there is simply an inherent resistance to vary. However we have got to evolve. We have to pivot. We’re standing, you already know, in a brand new world. It isn’t a brand new norm. It is the norm. 

The Fast Response Pressure has been funded for a second hearth season, July via December.

Produced by Heather Abbott. Affiliate producer: LaCrai Mitchell. Broadcast affiliate: Emilio Almonte. Edited by Warren Lustig.