With more than 500,000 acres ablaze across the western U.S., aerial firefighters from Colorado Springs have been hopping with daily sorties against fires from southern California to Oregon.
There’s been no respite for the crew from Peterson Air Force Base’s 302nd Airlift Wing since it was called to take on flames last week, said Lt. Col. Robert Fairbanks. But the wing’s part-time airmen aren’t dragging with the military duty that took them away from civilian jobs.
Fairbanks said they’re inspired.
“It is an opportunity to use our training and our abilities to see an immediate impact and results,” he said.
Fairbanks’ crew is flying out of Fresno, Calif., with a C-130 packing the Modular Airborne Firefighting System, which has 3,000 gallons of retardant. They were called up last week and joined Air Force units from Wyoming and Nevada on the firefighting mission.
The four-engined transport planes fly low and slow ahead of wildfires and spray a 100-foot-wide line of retardant that’s up to 400-yards long. The retardant lines can halt a fire’s advance, allowing crews on the ground a chance to snuff the flames.
The missions require precision flying at the edge of what pilots call “the envelope.” In this case, that means the slow speed of the flight, combined with the low-altitude of the missions, puts the crews close to the point where the C-130 goes from high-performance aircraft to 70-ton brick.
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