Santa Maria Airtanker Base

Progress takes flight at SM airport
By Isaiah Brookshire, Staff Writer
So Cal Fire Journals Response

The Santa Maria Airport has been abuzz with activity in the last weeks. From movement on a permanent fire-fighting base to a special honor for the airport’s tower crew, there is a lot going on.

The downgrading of tanker bases at the Santa Barbara Airport in 2007 and at the Santa Maria Airport in 2009 meant the county was without permanent aerial fire protection for the first time since 1958. Recent meetings between fire officials, the Forest Service personnel and local politicians about bringing the Santa Maria base back to full capacity have been productive, according to Congresswoman Lois Capps.

In a statement from Capps’s press secretary, Ashley Schapitl said, “She understands that ensuring our firefighting community has all the tools they need to do their job thoroughly and quickly is paramount. The Congresswoman has been actively working to find a solution that ensures public safety and the ability to effectively fight fires.”

Schapitl went on to say, “She is confident the details of the agreement will be put to paper in the coming weeks that will address the concerns of the local fire chiefs and ensure the Santa Maria Air Tanker base will be adequately staffed and equipped to respond to wildfires.”

The concerns the new resolution addresses mainly are related to the time it takes for firefighting aircraft to reach the Central Coast. In an email Schapitl said, “The fire chief’s main concern was that in the event of a wildfire, it would take too long to get the firefighting operation up and running if the based remained ‘call when needed’ as opposed to ‘full time.’”

She said there were also worries that the aircraft would have to fly as far as Porterville, Paso Robles and Fox Field to reload retardant, sapping precious hours away from battling blazes. According to Schapitl, the new resolution quells those fears by “essentially bringing the base back to full-time status.” An exact date for when the deal might be complete wasn’t given, but Capp’s expects to move forward in the coming weeks.

Taking off:

With speculation abounding on whether the Santa Maria Airport will get a tanker base, some are already thinking about how and with what aircraft those fires will be fought. David Baskett is a local business man who has attempted in recent years to bring Russian firefighting aircraft into the Forest Service’s tanker fleet to varying degrees of success.

Baskett even came up with a plan to help lower levels of radiation at nuclear power plants crippled in the Japanese tsunami by using his tanker aircraft equipped with special foam. This too met with some resistance from officials who weren’t keen to be seen as incompetent or unprepared. Baskett said he continues to work on solving problems in Japan, but has shifted his focus back to supplying the Forest Service with tankers.

Baskett said his new BAE 200 firefighting aircraft would help restore the aging and inadequate tankers. He said that during the recent Texas wildfires there simply weren’t enough aircraft to meet the needs. “They ran into big problems and didn’t win any congressional kudos for their lack of airplanes,” he said.

While meetings over restoring the Santa Maria Air Tanker base to full-time status have been progressing, Baskett said he also was meeting with success. “We expect to sign a contract to begin testing in Russia within the next few weeks.” He added, “This is a huge step to contracting in the U.S.”

The BAE 200 will have to undergo rigorous testing if it is to enter into the Forest Service tanker lineup. One of the most challenging will be one Baskett calls the “Dixie Cup test.” The Forest Service wants any tanker it operates to lay down a consistent line of retardant or water. This helps with operational logistics but also ensures there aren’t breaks in the fire line. “Imagine a field, 3,000 feet long and 1,000 feet wide. It’s covered in steel toothpicks and on top of each toothpick is a Dixie cup. Now what the Forest Service wants you to do is fly over at 120 miles per hour and drop roughly the same amount of retardant into each cup,” said Baskett. While confident his aircraft were up to the task, he said the testing would take place in Russia, near the BAE 200 factory, where fine-tuning could take place at a lower cost.

If the testing goes well, Baskett plans to deliver 10 of his tankers to the U.S. and base them out of the Santa Maria Airport. Under contract with the Forest Service, Baskett said he hopes to employ about 80-90 total employees at the tanker base. He said he also hopes to build a new hangar and maintenance buildings at the airport to house his aircraft.

The plans for the BAE 200 don’t end with a Forest Service contract. Currently, Baskett and his business partners are in the process of forming a separate board that would raise funds to give Santa Barbara County priority on one of the tankers. The “Spirit of Santa Barbara,” as Baskett envisions it, would be funded by local citizens and companies that are willing to donate toward more fire protection. The idea for the designated tanker came after talks with property owners in Santa Barbara and Montecito, some of whom had lost homes in devastating fires.“They told me they would be happy to donate in exchange for priority access to a tanker,” said Baskett.

So Cal Fire Journal Perspective: With the loss of C-130 and numerous P-3 Orion aircraft the Central Coast is extremely vulnerable to wildfires. Many of these aircraft have been grounded since there were concerns about metal fatigue and air-worthiness. The age and fatigue are serious concerns as well as corrosion, this was justified after a c-130 wings fell off during a wildfire sortie in Northern California killing the crew.

Aero Union Corporation's airtankes have a long history of battling wildfires on the Central Coast and on the Los Padres National Forest. They have flown on many major campaign fires and have been a great firefighting asset capable of dropping water and retardant from the air in substantial volumes, which have a much larger capacity then the Cal Fire S-2 aircraft.

With heavy fuel loads of dense brush in the urban interface, much larger loads are required to hold these fires in check. With extreme energy release components of dry or dead forest fuels, larger aircraft with tanks of at least 2,000 gallons are needed. Hopefully the advent of newer jet assisted aircraft will fill the void created by the loss of older aircraft.

The solution is quick initial attack, hold the fires in check when they are small, not to drop millions of gallons of retardant when fires are massive. The quick initial attack from a local air tanker base is very important to people who live in the foothill communities. The concept of hitting the fire hard and quick while it is in the incipient phase must occur at the outset. Larger airtankers VLAT carrying up to 10,000 gallons of water are needed to cool a fire front until ground forces are in place for fire attack. Once a fire is well established, no amount of retardant can slow a forest inferno.

As the owner and CEO of Southern California Fire Journal I would encourage all of our faithful readers and your family members to contact their Congressional Office and ask for support. Every time there are budget cuts to aircraft, ground forces or forest fuel thinning projects it weakens the chain of survivability from wildfires. Of course homeowners must be responsible to maintain defensible space around their homes and property which many negate. We should not risk firefighters lives for people who have not cleared their brush and flammable vegetation from their homes and property.

With the Santa Ana season here, thousands of homes and millions of people lay in wait for the peril of large fires. To mark the 50th anniversary of the Great Bel Air conflagration we will be covering a story of those who battled the massive wildfire and urban conflagration. Many of the lessons learned from this wildfire are very applicable today. We are only as safe as our neighbor, fires from downed power lines, lightning, careless use of fire, children playing with matches or the insidious torch of arsonists threaten our very existence. Without airtanker and fixed wing support we have yet another chink in our armour of protection.

We know the U.S. Forest Service has been conducting studies as to the effectiveness of retardant and the chemical effects on forest fuels and water tributaries which is a good concept. The USFS reports that fire retardant is only used on 5 percent of the wildfires that start each year, costing $24 million to $36 million a year of the nearly $1 billion spent annually fighting wildfires. There were 36,000 retardant drops from 2000 through 2010, using more than 90 million gallons of the substance.Of course research should always continue to the effectivenss of suppressing agents but to outlaw its use at this current time would be ludicrous.

We also know there is much debate about using heavy helicopters and super scooper air craft and the cost and safety concerns associated with these programs. But let's not become penny wise and pound foolish with the fire budget. Write to your Forest Supervisor and Congressional office asking for support.