Tanker crash shows US firefighting fleet badly needs overhaul, critics say

Grounded for a day after a deadly crash in South Dakota, firefighting C-130 tankers have taken to the skies again. The questions remain about whether the Forest Service has enough air power.?

By Patrik Jonsson,?Staff writer / July 3, 2012

A C-130 from Peterson Air Force Base flies past Pikes Peak Thursday during a flight over the Waldo Canyon Fire burning west of Colorado Springs, Colo. A C-130 based out of North Carolina crashed while fighting wildfires in South Dakota Sunday.

Mark Reis/The Colorado Springs Gazette/AP

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The crash of a firefighting air tanker in the Black Hills of South Dakota on Sunday and the subsequent grounding nearly half of the planes currently fighting fires in the US has sharpened longstanding?questions about whether the US has the air power necessary to fight wildfires.

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On Tuesday, the grounded Air Force C-130s began rotating back into service to fight some 50 active fires in the West.?The fires have spread at alarming rates, putting the focus on air tankers to cool down the leading edges of the fires.

All sides agree that the nine planes contracted to the US Forest Service this year ? together with seven Air Force C-130s called on this summer ? are too few for the mounting threat of wildland fires from rising temperatures and the spread of cities into rural landscapes. A decade ago, the Forest Service had 43 planes on contract.

The Forest Service has forwarded a plan to Congress for as many as 28 new planes, but this fire season ? with fierce fires and three plane crashes so far ? has exposed the need for far greater urgency and vision from Washington, critics say.?

?We?ve seen this thing coming for the last 20 years: Eight of our planes were bought during the Korean War for maritime patrol, not flying low and slow over mountainous terrain and diving into smoky canyons,? says Bill Gabbert, a veteran wildland firefighter who now blogs at Wildfire Today, in a phone call from a ?somber? fire scene near where the National Guard C-130 crashed Sunday. ?The fact is, the Forest Service has done virtually nothing to rebuild the fleet.?

This season, two of the Forest Service's contracted planes were lost, one to a crash that claimed two lives in June, the other to a crash landing that left the craft unusuable. Sunday?s crash, which killed four members of the North Carolina Air National Guard's 145th Expeditionary Wing and injured two others, happened only days after the 145th?was called in.

Last month, President Obama expedited an order for three 1980s-era tankers, which will now come online in August, as the wildfire season winds down. Four more planes will be added in the next two years. But Mr. Gabbert calls this a "Band-Aid" solution.??

The way he sees it, the Forest Service allowed itself to slide into a bad situation without having a plan to get out of it. The crisis largely took shape in?2002, when a firefighting C-130 literally lost its wings and crashed while fighting wildfires in California. That set off a new safety regimen, which was perhaps needed, but decimated the overall fleet. Few contractors were willing or able to meet the government's new standards for the price offered.?

Just last year, President Obama?cancelled the contract of one contractor that supplied eight air tankers, citing maintenance noncompliance. Currently, only two contractors are supplying the nine tankers that are for the Forest Service's exclusive use. (In addition to the seven Air Force C-130s, the Forest Service can also call upon three additional "emergency" contract planes, but has not yet done so this year.)

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/yg9QUIalBDU/Tanker-crash-shows-US-firefighting-fleet-badly-needs-overhaul-critics-say

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