2025 Wildfire Season: Madre Wildfire (CA) Final Update

 

Direct link to July 5th post by Neptune Aviation on Facebook

All things being equal, this is my final post on the Madre Fire that has burned 80,779 in and near the County of San Luis Obispo north of Los Angeles California. As I write this post, the wildfire is at 97 percent containment, wildland firefighting crews remain on scene to monitor the containment lines and put out any hotspots. I will continue to keep on eye on the Madre Fire on Inciweb for any significant changes in the status of this wildfire and if there are any such changes I will make another post. 

Here is a nice video from KSBY News on or about July 11th  on the role of airtankers and helicopters that took off from the Santa Marie Airtanker Base to fight the Madre Fire. I am sorry that I am not able to embed this video as embedding is disabled. I hope you take a couple of minutes to watch this video.

Here are links to my earlier articles on the Madre Fire: July 4th and July 9th

2024 Wildfire Season: New BLM SEAT Base in Casper WY

 Direct link to Facebook post by Casper/Natrona County International Airport

I have a lot of respect for the Bureau of Land Management Fire operations in the United States. Further, as regular readers know, I have a lot of respect for Single Engine Airtankers (SEAT) that do important work all over the United States and internationally working wildfires in support of the wildland firefighters on the ground. SEAT bases and other airports capable of handling SEAT traffic and supporting operations in close proximity to wildfires are important. So when I saw reference to the opening of a BLM SEAT base at the Casper/Natrona County International Airport on June 14th, I knew that I wanted to share this with you. I understand that this airport also has a Large Air Tanker base.

Aerial Fire Magazine has a short article about the opening of the new base in Casper that may be found here. In addition, K2Radio out of Wyoming covers the opening of the new base in an article posted after the base opened

A look at Jeffco Airtanker Base (Broomfield Colorado)

I have a lot of respect for the work that is done at Airtanker bases of various sizes. From tanker base mangers to various crews filling retardant and/or water tanks to fueling aircraft to the contract maintenance servicing aircraft overnight so they are ready to go the next morning. I came across this video from 9News in Denver Colorado thanks to my friends at the NJFFS Section B10 website shared the video on their daily videos on their homepage (videos updated daily) on or about May 20th. Over the years that I have been writing this blog I have known that Jeffco is an important Airtanker base servicing the southwestern U.S. and adjacent locations. I thought that some of you might enjoy this short behind the scenes look at Jeffco Airtanker Base.

Direct link to video from News9 on YouTube