Fighting wildfires in Western Australia

As we approach winter here in America and elsewhere in the colder climates of the northern hemisphere, summer is approaching in the southern hemisphere. And with summer in Australia comes wildfire or bushfire season. 

I literally stumbled on some wonderful videos of bushfire activity in Western Australia from the Department of Parks and Wildlife (DPaW) in Western Australia where they have some videos showing firefighters in the air and on the ground fighting bush fires on their youtube channel.

I am embedding and sharing four videos from the DPaW here. I will supply a direct link to each video and I encourage you to use that link to go to the about page for each video and read what the DPaW says about the bushfire activity that you are seeing. The videos are not taken at the same fire.

In the first video you will see a front end loader in action. According to the description on the about page for the video, "a front end loader is being used to construct a mineral earth break along the fire edge to assist fire tankers in containing the fire." 

direct link to video

The second video shows a Single Engine Air Tanker (SEAT) making two drops from 80 meters (262 ft) above ground level. 

direct link to video

The final two short videos show dozers, front loaders, and other ground pounders fighting fires on the ground.

direct link to video

direct link to video

Added on Dec. 5, 2013. The SEAT in the second video is a Dromader. It was a Dromader that crashed in New South Wales Australia on Oct. 24. The Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority later grounded all Dromaders, requiring passing safety checks on wings along with passing a new inspection before being deemed airworthy. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau released a preliminary report on the crash recently, I have an article with more information and a couple of links that I posted on Dec. 5, 2013.

I was poking around on youtube this afternoon looking at tanker videos when I found this video taking from the cockpit of a dromader M18 SEAT. I believe that the footage was taken in Wisconsin.

Enjoy!

Dromader M-18

I first heard about the Dromader M-18, made in Poland by PZ Melec, a couple of months ago when I found out that Downstown Aero used to own a Dromader M-18. From what I understand, Downstown sold the Dromader sometime in the last year. Followers of this blog may recall that the NJ Forest Fire Service contracts with Downstown for Single Engine Air Tankers (SEATs). In later wonderings on the web learning about the world of SEATs, I ran into frequent references about the Dromader M-18. A description of the Dromader may be found on this page.

The Dromader specs page on the manufacturers website uses the metric measurements. Conversions to the english system is a matter of using the correct conversion formulas. Thanks to this spec page that TL Stein sent me, those of us still using the english system have a set of recognizable specs to look at without using conversion formulas. Those of you who prefer these specs expressed in the metric system can go here. I believe that the hopper of the Dromader has a capacity of about 600 gallons.

For still pictures of the Dromader M-18, go here. Note the pictures by Downstown of the Dromader taken before they sold the aircraft. Finally for a video of the Dromader in action, see this youtube video.