U.S. Forest Service to review ban on flying firefighting helicopters at night

The U.S. Forest Service is reviewing its practice of not flying firefighting helicopters at night, in an apparent response to criticism of how the agency handled the early hours of the huge Station fire.

At the urging of the Los Angeles County Fire Department, the Board of Supervisors last week called on the federal government to authorize deployment of water-dropping choppers after dark to battle fires in the Angeles National Forest, where the Station blaze began to spread on its first night. The Forest Service has long considered night flying too risky for pilots.

Forest Service Fire and Aviation Management Director Tom Harbour told the Associated Press on Monday that, “We are in the process ... of one more time taking a look at night-flying operations. But we will have to make sure that those operations, before we change our policy, are worth the benefits.”

The review is “welcome news,” said Tony Bell, spokesman for Supervisor Michael Antonovich, who has blasted the Forest Service for not mounting a more aggressive air assault on the Station fire.

Helicopters for the county and Los Angeles City Fire Department routinely fly night missions.

County choppers helped limit the Station fire to 15 acres during the first day, after it broke out in the lower Angeles National Forest above La Cañada Flintridge. With the fire confined to federal land, the Forest Service later took control and the helicopters were sent home.

After Forest Service commanders rolled back their response, the fire started to grow overnight, and helicopters did not return in force until several hours after first light on the critical second day, The Times has reported. People familiar with the operation told the paper that, later on Day 2, the Forest Service also rejected recommendations from firefighters for more aircraft.

The Station blaze eventually killed two county firefighters, burned 250 square miles of forest, destroyed nearly 100 dwellings and cost about $90 million to fight.

A Forest Service inquiry into its own management of the fire concluded that helicopters would not have helped early on Day 2 because the flames were burning in terrain too steep for ground crews to take advantage of water drops.

But a county review suggested that a quicker and fiercer attack from the sky might have kept the flames from raging out of control.

-- Times staff and wire reports

Comments

[nick]

As a former US Marine. Night flying of these choppers can be dangerous. Especially in the firefighting areas. You have uneven terrain, limited distances you can see. Power lines. There is a lot of danger day or night. Remember folks to count firefighters died to protect us. And for people to be so critical. This is LA yeah we're gonna have choppers airborne overnight, but look at all the crime, plus you need medivacs . So I really don't know what to tell people, other than to move somewhere else if you don't like fires, our the services these folks provide.

[Fire Pilot]

Sure night drops are possible. But it really is a risk management issue. NVG equipped crews can and do perform the work already in highly urbanized areas such as LA and Orange County. Terrain and other other obstructions such as wires play a major role in the effectiveness of the drops. When you have to drop high to avoid wires or terrain, you might as well not drop at all. Especially at night.

One of things the public really never hears about is how aircraft often sit on the ground and never get ordered. During the fires last year, several qualified contractors had aircraft sit on the ramp at Van Nuys and other nearby airports while houses were burning all around them just a few miles away. This happens more often than not. CALFIRE and the U.S. Forest Service have call when needed (CWN) agreements to use these aircraft, but often they go unused due to the lack of "managers" to keep track of their flight time. No real efforts have been made to improve the availability or process to get more managers qualified or establish a process to make them readily available.

Several aircrews watched the Freeway Fire in Orange County last year on television for hours before being ordered up to go to the fire even though they were only 15 minutes away. Using these resources in the early stages of a fire can go a long way towards keeping small fires in check rather than the raging infernos that go on for weeks.

Dozens of helicopters with fire qualified pilots are already available through these existing CWN agreements. The problem is they are underutilized. I personally have sat on the flight line ready to go with helicopter and bucket more than once watching a fire start just a mile away, only to hear aircraft being dispatched from 30 miles away to come to the fire while we sat and watched it grow.

[HeliKB]

As a firefighting helicopter pilot, I'm game for going NVG -- or at least I am not wholeheartedly against the idea to say the least. But those pressing so hard for it must consider all angles of making this possible.

Introducing night flying to the firefighting practices of the USFS and CalFire will be a logistical nightmare at its beginning and extremely costly at all levels.

I work for a small but reputable and very experienced operator who contracts for the USFS and other agencies. Currently, we and 99% or better of the other contractors are not trained or equipped for NVG operations in firefighting. One would have to not only ask but answer the question: How are the domestic operators going to afford and pull-off meeting the demands of going NVG in preparation for fires and fire contracts that may never happen?

Also like most of the fire contractors out there, we had a terrible fire season last year. Very little work and very little profit. When maintaining crews and aircraft is already a tremendous challenge under current economic conditions and in the wake of a dismal fire season, it seems to me it would be an unrealistic demand for most of the operators out there.

Assuming this night mobilization is deemed worth the risk factor, effort and expense:

1. Who's going to pay for this, the American taxpayers who cannot afford other matters at hand? The business owners (most of whom cannot afford it)?

2. What would the effect be on the effective, reliable and loyal operators who are already crushing under the demands of the USFS for equipment and experience standards prior to new demands for NVG operations?

3. What happens when the contractors spend this effort and assets to prepare for nighttime firefighting and the very next fire season again has a comparatively small amount of fire activity and/or they aren't awarded contracts they need to repay their newly incurred debts?

From where I'm sitting, I don't see this being a viable solution in the immediate future.

I would suggest that the USFS and agencies instead mobilize their commanders and ground crews in the earlier and darker hours of the morning so that helicopter crews can begin to fight fires immediately upon reporting for their 14 hour duty days. The last two fire seasons I have personally seen have often been comprised of days that don't start until the afternoon when all of the "chiefs" have finally gotten around devising a plan for the day of operations -- after half the day has already gone by, and perhaps more importantly, the temperatures have risen and the fires are raging.

Just my two cents... or ten.