Once a big fire is burning, there’s no time to pause and debate issues of effectiveness or cost, however.
(Jones said a new study hopes to address the data deficit, but data collection will need to continue for several more years.) But in 2011, Stahl’s group did a correlational study using Forest Service data that found retardant use had no effect on wildfire size or initial attack success rates. Stahl claims that fighting fire from the air is not only expensive, dangerous and environmentally harmful, but that it has yet to be proven to work.įorest Service experiments have demonstrated that retardants can reduce fire intensity and spread up to twice as effectively as water. “They must have a lot of money to spend - to waste,” he says of Colorado’s air corps budget. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell recently predicted that high fire-suppression costs for the 2015 season will divert funds from other important agency programs.Īndy Stahl, director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, has criticized aerial firefighting. The slurry itself averages about $2 per gallon, and the Forest Service used almost 9 million gallons of it last year. Tankers cost upwards of $6,000 per hour to operate. And the slurry, which is rich in nitrogen, can harm fish, wildlife and watersheds, despite agency guidelines to prevent drops onto vulnerable areas.Īerial firefighting is expensive.
If similar casualty rates prevailed on the ground, the Forest Service found, more than 200 ground firefighters would die every year. Thirty-seven firefighters have died in aerial firefighting accidents in the last decade. California, currently the only state to have its own firefighting fleet, has 22 air tankers, 12 helicopters and 14 air tactical planes.īut unpredictable atmospheric conditions make flying over wildfires difficult and dangerous. John Hickenlooper approved a $21 million budget for the state to develop its own aerial firefighting fleet of helicopters, spotter planes and small retardant-dropping air tankers. Spokeswoman Jennifer Jones said the agency is working to bring up to 28 air tankers into service.
#AERIAL FIREFIGHTING PLUS#
Forest Service, which saw its large air tanker fleet shrink to just nine planes in 2012, has 20 air tankers on exclusive-use and call-when-needed contracts for the 2015 season, plus one under Forest Service operation. But is it safe? And is it effective enough to justify the high costs?
Politicians and the media thrill at the sight and clamor for more. The bursts of red slurry bring hope to those whose homes are imperiled. Pilots fly air tankers over mountainous terrain and drop fire retardant - up to nearly 12,000 gallons per trip - onto the dense forests below. When large wildfires blaze, the public counts on airplanes to put them out. Forest Service Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest
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