What Air Attack does

For the last few months I have been writing different types of air tankers and helicopters in the arsenal of air attack fire fighting resources (aka air attack) used by State and Federal agencies here in America. I have talked about retardants and class A foams used by these air tankers and helicopters to retard or suppress flames. But what is it exactly that air tankers and helicopters do? Yes, they drop retardants and suppressants (water/foam mix). But they do more, aerial fire fighting resources and the people who fly them as well as those who provide support operations do what they do to support the crews on the ground who work to contain, control, and mop-up wildland fires. Or to put it another way, air attack (air tankers and helicopters) supplements ground crews and slows the fire until the ground crews can get to it. In what is known as extended attack on a fire, you will have both ground crews and air attack working a fire.

Tl Stein offers these observations:

In an ideal situation, both entities (air attack and ground crews) work as a team to bring a fire under control. 97% of the fires that aircraft are used on, ARE put out by the crews on the ground.  We just give assistance, that's all.  That is our purpose, that is our focus and that is our goal.  Initial attack is the key to keeping potentially huge fires small, therefore, the quicker we can get retardant in front of the fire, the quicker and more efficient the crews on the ground can do their job.

The other 3% fall into those fires that are most likely lightening caused, 20 miles from the nearest road, inaccessible terrain and no chance of dropping a helitack crew....much less smoke jumpers.  The theory being, surround the active fire with retardant and/or drop massive amounts of water via helitanker, then sit and watch it for a day or two.  One or two more drops of water to kill any rekindle after that.

I am going to write a series of articles in two broad parts. Part 1, if you will, focuses on two aspects of what I call the intersection of aviation resources and ground crews: helitack aka helicopter attack and the smoke jumper program. One aspect of helitack is using helicopters to deliver specially trained fire fighters, often working with other ground crews, to work a wildfire. As their name implies, smoke jumpers parachute in with equipment to help contain a fire.

In part 2, I will write a little about what ground crews do, relying heavily on various resources from the internet.

So stay tuned. In my next article, I will write an introduction to helitack.