Whenever I hear about a fire or that we have to breathe unhealthy, smoky air, I’m reminded of the time I had to evacuate from Kingsbury Grade because of the 2021 Caldor Fire. My neighbors and I said our goodbyes, hoping we would find our homes unscathed when returning.
Thousands of people do not get to experience that relief when they find their homes or businesses reduced to ashes after a wildfire, having lost everything. How devastating that must be.
I’m in no way a firefighting expert but keep wondering if current measures are sufficient. Are boots on the ground and dozers enough? For the Caldor Fire, it took 24 days to have 5,072 personnel deployed and 44% containment reached while it spread and scorched the land, threatening towns and lives. Full containment was not obtained for nearly 9 weeks! Over 1,000 structures were destroyed and 81 damaged.
Do we have the luxury of letting fires run rampant like this? I’ll wager the people who have lost their homes, pets, and in some tragic cases, family members, would say no.
What happens when there are too many fires and not enough personnel? As reported by PBS News in August, there is a serious shortage of firefighters, and “these crucial public servants are stretched thin and underpaid.”
Why does the U.S. not have a fleet of air tankers to hit blazes hard within the first hours? I’m not talking about helicopters or smaller fixed-wing aircraft, but VLATs (very large air tankers), such as Boeing 747s (none in service) and DC10s (four in service operated by 10 Tanker Air Carrier).
A Boeing 747 can carry 19,600 gallons of water or 17,500 gallons of retardant, and is capable of laying down a swath of fire retardant 3 miles long and as wide as 150 feet. If we had a number of them, they could have a major impact, knocking out fires soon after they start, or keeping them confined to unpopulated areas (to protect communities but allow natural forest renewal). Ironically, the last remaining Boeing 747 VLAT was retired in 2021 during the height of one of the worst fire seasons in the West.
It all comes down to money.
These large planes are expensive to convert and maintain, and they require airports with long enough runways and infrastructure for loading retardant, water, and compressed air. Companies like Evergreen and Global Tanker Services (GTS), which operated VLATs, had to shut down because of financial difficulties, per aerialfiremag.com.
According to the CEO of GTS, funding and securing government contracts have always been a struggle, in part because of how governments prioritize the funding to fight fires. Federal funding is generally not allocated until a fire has taken hold, at which point it’s often too late.
I would argue that this has to change. The federal and state governments must put forest and wildfire management higher on their list, invest in a number of VLATs to prevent rapid, uncontrolled spread of fires, and require insurance companies to pitch in. Millions of dollars are spent rebuilding and treating injuries. While prevention and VLATs are certainly expensive, reconstruction is much more costly, not to mention the possibility of lives lost. The Caldor fire alone caused $1.2 billion in damage, according to ABC10.
I realize that wildfires are an integral part of forest health and the landscape in the Western U.S., but that landscape has changed significantly over the past decades. We cannot afford to let fires burn freely and rip through communities. Rather, we must invest in and strategically employ all possible resources, including VLATs.
~ Jochen van der Mühlen fell in love with Tahoe decades ago and was ecstatic when he had the chance to relocate from Germany to the Bay Area in 2000 to work in IT. He now resides in Stateline, skis every day in the winter, and enjoys the crystal-clear waters of Lake Tahoe whenever he can.
Working in IT is not an adequate credential for writing an article of this type. Are VLATs the best option or would smaller aircraft that can use small airports a wiser investment. I don’t know. Does Mr. van der Muhlen? Is there a shortage of firefighters due to lack of funding or lack of people willing to do the work? I don’t know. Does Mr. van der Muhlen? It does seem to my very inexpert eyes that this last season saw very aggressive initial air attacks on fires in the area in order to protect population centers. As far as onsurance companies doing their part, what is that part? It is not their job to protect our communities; it is ours.
Mr. van der Mühlen makes interesting observations and while I would not disagree with his conclusion that effectively, timely wildland fire suppression would benefit from greater investment, a more diverse, balanced approach would provide greater benefit before and during a fire.
Very large air tankers are a valuable tool in wildland fire suppression and I agree that more of them would be a useful resource, but an even more encouraging trend in wildland firefighting has been the transition from propeller-driven air tankers – many of them military surplus aircraft – to the new generation of jet powered large air tankers like the BAe-146 and MD87. These planes, smaller than the VLATs, although still designated Large Air Tankers (LAT’s) are capable of using airports for reloading and refueling that have shorter, lighter capacity runways than are needed for the DC-10 or 747 VLATS. Airports capable of accommodating LAT’s are considerably more numerous, available in rural areas and provide the potential for significantly faster turns and more retardant on a fire more quickly. In addition, more companies have the resources to acquire and operate LAT’s, so there can be more of them distributed over a broader area. Air tankers are great and more of them based in more places would be terrific, but they are far from a panacea.
A tremendous amount of federal funding has been utilized to good effect in the Lake Tahoe Basin for wildland fire prevention, so federal funding really IS allocated before it’s “too late”, but much more could be used, because thinning and understory management to improve forest health and fire resistance in the overstocked forests surrounding the Lake is a mammoth and never ending job. A bright spot that is perhaps underappreciated outside the fire service is the early detection of fire afforded by the network of fire cameras now blanketing the Tahoe Basin and eastern Sierra, thanks in large part to the University of Nevada and Nevada Seismological Laboratory, CalFIRE, PG&E and NVEnergy, to name just a few of the partners. An old fire service truism is that, “All fires start small” and the ability to detect that first puff of smoke is critical to getting an quick knockdown.
The really key element in my observation, however, is more boots on the ground. Mr. van der Mühlen decries the 9 weeks it took to achieve full containment on the Caldor Fire, but firefighters, not air tankers, contain a fire through the grueling, dirty work of cutting line and mopping up hot spots along and within the fire perimeter. Air tankers may slow the progress of a fire toward structures, but engine companies are literally what save them. Wildland firefighters perform tremendously hard work under frequently desperately dangerous conditions and they’re paid as though they were making burgers at a fast-food franchise or swinging chair at a ski resort. As the older generation ages out and retires, a expanding void of knowledge and experience makes it difficult to provide entry-level firefighters with competent leadership while the effects of climate change push fire behavior to new extremes. Compensating wildland firefighters adequately for the work they do and providing them with year ’round work or at least year ’round benefits would go a long way towards keeping people in the fire service who know what they’re doing.
Air tankers – especially VLAT’s – are a valuable tool in wildland fire suppression, no doubt about it. No one finds them sexier or more exciting than a firefighter, but it should be recognized that they are only one tool in the quiver. At the end of the day, greater investment in fuels management, early detection, community notification and ground-based firefighting resources should receive at least equal importance to air assets in a balanced and cost-effective approach to wildland fire response.