Will grounded tankers effect basin firefighting efforts?

Just as wildfire season is opening across the West, the government grounded its aging fleet of 33 former military tankers that had been among the biggest weapons in the arsenal for fighting wildland blazes.

The U.S. Forest Service and the Interior Department on May 10 terminated contracts with private companies for use of the planes after the National Transportation Safety Board said their airworthiness could not be assured.

Three such planes crashed between 1994 and 2002, killing seven crew members.

Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth said, in the wake of the NTSB report, continuing to use the tankers posed "an unacceptable risk" to aviators, ground firefighters and communities near the blazes.

The fixed-wing planes - some of them 60 years old - had been used primarily during initial attacks on fires and for protecting buildings when fires were moving toward urban areas, said Dan Jiron, a spokesman for the Forest Service.

He said the government still has the use of 491 aircraft, including smaller fixed-wing planes and helicopters.

"It's serious, but we will be able to do our job," Jiron said.

The tankers were each capable of dumping from 1,700 to 2,500 gallons of water a minute.

The Forest Service grounded the fleet of tankers it had under contract after two crashes in 2002, including one near Walker, Calif., that killed three men. The planes were reactivated after a new inspection program was developed at the Energy Department's Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M., but the NTSB said last month that maintenance and inspection programs were still inadequate.

As for firefighting efforts in the Tahoe Basin, Rex Norman, public information officer for the Forest Service, said helicopters are more effective in the area's mountainous topography.

"Right now, the issue of the grounding of the tankers is in flux," Norman said. "But here in the basin, we find that helicopters are more efficient than the tankers and, to that end, we're trying to build on that resource."

Norman said the copters have a faster turnaround time during firefighting operations and are more accurate when it comes to putting water where it's needed.

"And you have a trillion gallons of water to draw from," Norman said, referring to Lake Tahoe.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the Forest Service are hoping to have between eight and 18 of the air tankers flying again soon, Norman noted.

"During the Gondola Fire, tankers were used sparingly. Most of the fighting was done with the helicopters. It's situational," Norman said.

Acting State Forester Pete Anderson of the Nevada Division of Forestry agreed that helicopters are more useful in the Tahoe basin.

"While we use a lead plane to sort of quarterback the operation, our main tool is the helicopter," said Anderson.

"Ever since the Walker tragedy, we figured that the government would take some sort of action" on the air tankers, Anderson said.

Anderson said that NDF was pursuing the possibility of acquiring single-engine tankers to take up the slack.

"There are six in the state and we've put in a request for 15 more. Of course, who knows if we'll get them?" Anderson said.

North Lake Tahoe Fire Protection Chief Jim Linardos said the grounding of the tankers comes at a bad time.

"We are experiencing a severe drought all across the country and it's especially bad here," Linardos said. "To ground the tankers just as we're entering fire season is not good timing and I'm upset about it."

Linardos said that a recent fire off Highway 80 utilized the air tankers and "was probably the last fire they worked on before the grounding."

Linardos also cautioned that with the current cancellations of the government contracts at both the state and federal level, a fire in the area could be costly to the district.

"Without government help, the district will be on the hook for the money it will take to fight it," Linardos said. "The cost issues are becoming clear."

Whether the NTSB, FAA and various firefighting agencies can come to a compromise soon is anybody's guess.

In the meantime, the Air National Guard is re-fitting some aircraft to meet the needs of wildland firefighting, but that will take time - time fire districts in the basin don't have.

"The fuel moistures are way down for this part of the year and will only get worse. We'd better pray for rain," Linardos said.