Initial Attack Revisited

Just last week I was talking to one of my new friends in Canada who used to fly fires north of the U.S. border. We were talking about flying initial attack in Canada, at least when he was flying fires. As soon as a smoke was spotted, often from a tower, the call would go out to the nearest tanker base and a group of tankers and their bird dog would be dispatched. Sometimes the fire would be brought under control before the tankers arrived, so they would be called back to base. 

So, initial attack has been very much on my mind recently. This got me thinking about post that I have written on this blog devoted to initial attack. So I went back and looked. I found my first post devoted to initial attack, posted on May 24, 2009, where I wrote about air tankers and helicopters have a crucial role to play in initial attack. A friend of mine who is an experienced tanker pilot and a S-2T pilot for CAL FIRE told me about how CAL FIRE uses tankers and helicopters in initial attack. That is, these aerial resources are deployed as soon as possible to stop the spread until the ground troops can get there. The goal being to keep the fire size small, from 2 to 10 acres. I hope you take a few moments to go and read my post of May 24, 2009. 

On October 23, 2009, I wrote about a 10-acre brush fire just north of San Diego CA (with a link to report from San Diego's CBS affiliate) that had been knocked out in under two hours. Finally the last and most recent post devoted to initial attack was a sort of reflection piece where I wrote about two hypothetical initial attack scenarios, one if California and the other in an eastern State  (go here to see my post of April 27, 2011).

At the same time that I knew that I had to go back in my blog and find my earlier initial attack posts, I came across a short report from Fox5SanDiego from last Thursday (May 16) on a small brush fire in eastern San Diego County CA on a 10-acre brush fire. Two air tankers and two helicopters were deployed to fire along with 15 engines, 3 fire crews, a dozer, and a water tender. The fire was brought under control in approximately one hour, maybe a little more. This small fire is a great example of initial attack. I don't know the timing of what resources were deployed when, but the point here is that tankers and helos did supply aerial support to help the crews on the ground get the fire under control. 

I am sure that there were several similar examples of initial attack from the recent spring wildfire season in NJ. For example in late March and early April, I heard of tankers being deployed to small wildfires in NJ while listening to the online scanner. I have no media reports of these fires to share with you. These small fires don't always end up in the news. 

So, all of you flying initial attack and all of you ground pounders working initial attack, thank-you for all you do to keep us safe. And stay safe. LACES!