Fire Season, 2k8.

[wannabatp]

Just wondering how your fire season is going. Generally interested to hear anyones story, but specifically interested in those on the patrol/bird dog/low time/contract end of things. (We all know you tanker pilots are in the pre-retirement stage of your careers and apart from staving off boredom, don't need the flight time).

Personally, in PQ, 7 weeks, no fires at all yet. Not looking like any are going to happen any time soon either.

Reports here are that it's the worst (or best, depending on your point of view) fire season in 25 years.

Some stats as of today for the province of Quebec:

Active fires: 0

Fires this year: 131
Hectares burned: 117.40

Five year average (same date)

Fires: 509
Hectares burned:137,005.88

...and more rain/low temps in the forecast.


I'm sure there are others who are P.O'ed at the low pay and no flight time. Just wanted to let you know, you are not alone!

[1000 HP]

Up until 2 weeks ago, we had a lot of fire support action in western Saskatchewan. Fires and lightning everywhere It just slowed down now. I'm flying a Turbo Otter hauling tourists, freight, and firefighters around and am presently on my second mandatory reset. 3 more glorious days off. (I went out to the local airport for coffee and was already eye-balling the local crop-dusters )

[Flybabe]

I'll have you know I'm nowhere NEAR retirement

But.. then again.. I'm just a copilot. LOL!

I can't say too much for back home, but it's been very busy here in California. So much so that the Mars and 4 -580's from Conair were called in to help.

[North Shore]

(We all know you tanker pilots are in the pre-retirement stage of your careers and apart from staving off boredom, don't need the flight time).

...Easy!! Some of us have 20+ years left. No, we don't need the time, but we still enjoy the flying. Slow where we are, too. Haven't turned a prop on a fire in 3 weeks now.

[Cat Driver]

Haven't turned a prop on a fire in 3 weeks now.

That means you can play poker or watch porn, ( we got good enough at poker to do both at once. ) or don't the air attack pilots and engineers do that anymore?

[fougner]

.

[200hr Wonder]

Alberta started with a bang but has been pretty slow lately. After this season I will have another 35 seasons before the Union says I'm too old. I'm in a multi aircraft group and the oldest guy isn't even 50 yet. In fact the combined age of the entire group is barely 50!

There fixed your post. Everyone knows your average pilot is about as mature as a 12 year old

[Just Duckie]

No action yet, but hard to fly with a broken wing when you're a Duck laying loose on "The Island" and watching the tide roll in. Going camping this weekend and will enjoy the fresh caught trout for dinner after a hard day of floating on the lake.
Will have a new stamp of approval from both sides of the border within 2 weeks, just in time to hit the fall fire season, somewhere
You can always dream!!

[scrambled_legs]

Don't worry... Fire fighting is a business just like anything else and I'm sure they'll find a way to get the planes flying so they'll receive the same funding for next year. I've personally seen two fires get reported when they were small enough that one guy could piss them out after consuming a case of beer. A week after being reported and the fires not growing much, despite not being touched, a huge windstorm rolled through and all of a sudden it was a huge forest fire. For the next 3 weeks they had probably 10 helis and 6 bombers working from dawn to dusk to put it out. The first time it happened, I thought it was just a mistake and the lesson would be learned, but the second time it happened within 2 years, I realized that its simply business. Why would you put out a fire with a small ground crew in a couple of hours, for a few $1,000, when you can wait a week and be employed steady for a few $100,000 or a million. This probably isn't too common in the high profile areas but in the backcountry, it appears to be a regular occurrence.

[Flybabe]

...just in time to hit the fall fire season, somewhere

See what you're missing??

[Cat Driver]

What happened to those " Practice " days when you go out and bomb imaginary fires?

Also don't they extend those practice days near the end of a slow season so as to " Burn Off " the budget money?

I remember one " Practice " session out of a base called Paradise .....(or was it Armstrong ) where after about two and a half hours of practice X/country flying I asked the Bird Dog Guru what in hell we were doing and he told me to shut the f.. up we were burning off budget money....

....ya gotta love government.

[Big Pistons Forever]

The fire season isn't over yet, there is still plenty of summer left. If it is any consolation a buddy of mine who is a meteorologist with Environment Canada predicted in April that all the summer weather would be a month late. So far, in the west, at least that is exactly what has happened, so who knows we may be sitting down to Thanksgiving Turkey... at the ATB

My pet peeve is those fire safe TV adds . How dare, our employer encourage safe camping practices because every responsible camper repersents the potential loss of flight pay.....Oh well at least they can't ban lightning.

[scrambled_legs]

BPF it's just like the Hell's Angels doing Kid's charity rides for the Children's Hospital. They don't care about the kids they just don't want the kids to die before they start using their product.

Your employer doesn't want little fires to start in public areas that'll burn out the ground fuel and be put out by a few cub scouts in the morning. What they want is the large fires that require heavy equipment to come in and where it can go "unnoticed" for several days before they start fighting it.

It really makes me sick to see this going on. Everyone likes it though as you get your money and then the loggers get an automatic logging permit in areas that often wouldn't be approved. This abuse really should be made more public though as the amount of unnecessary pollution from these fires is mind boggling. Here we are riding scooters to "save the environment" and the sky is red from fires 2 provinces over. Not to mention the millions of wasted dollars.

[Big Pistons Forever]

scrambled-legs:

My expereince is that the members of the various forest protection agencies in Canada do their best in very difficult circumstances and with constant monday morning quarterbacking by "experts". I have seen no evidence there is a wide spread conspiracy to encourage large fires. Coming to this conclusion by extrapolating a forest fire management policy on the basis of 2 fires you have observed is IMO evidence of a poor understanding of how forest protection works in the real world....BTW my post was meant as a light hearted comment and I thought it was pretty obvious I was not being serious

[Cat Driver]

AAhhhh....the subject of bureaucracy and its connection to fire suppression.

I can get in enough trouble just discussing how to fly airplanes without getting in pissing matches with some of the air tanker group....

...but I always relate the way fires are fought by remembering the group in the Thunder Bay ONMR base that were called the "Intelligence division. ".

[scrambled_legs]

OK then anyone want to explain why the fires in the Burton area of the Arrow Lakes, weren't touched for a week both times until they were out of control despite the locals yelling for someone to come. As soon as they were out of control, the calvary arrived and fought it for the following 3 weeks for a cost of million dollars, both times, within a few years of each other.

Or how about on the hwy that runs west from Quesnel to the small town of Nazko, right in the heart of the fire area two years ago. Two major fires were burning there and the forest service didn't touch them for five days. In this case, Canfor Forest Products already had logging rights, so they called in a crew from California who had it contained in a matter of days while our local government funded fire fighters sat at the base.

I've heard from people in the industry that this is common practice, especially nearing the end of the season. As Cat said, it's as simple as here's your budget and if you don't use it all, we'll be asking you why next year and trying to give you less. If you go over, we'll probably even give you more. It's not a conspiracy, road construction is always busiest at the end of the season, the hospital always replaces drugs, sheets, medical supplies that don't expire for a year, and the forest fire fighters let things burn. The only difference is the public doesn't realize that you're simply a business trying to make money, like any other branch of government.

So if you are saying that isn't true, then I'd love to hear why they couldn't spare one chopper or a ground crew even, for any day that week but the following week they had more than a dozen aircraft fighting it. They were all remote areas that don't get any publicity and this happens every time according to the locals.

[Driving Rain]

3rd week of April I attacked 5 fires in the YSB area. Since then zip, except for a 5 day deployment to Alberta where we did get to 1 fire.

[BeechGuy]

NL has been real slow, Few fires in Labrador, lasted a few days, other than that its been real quiet.

[old metal]

Good old playing poker and watching porn, that never gets old!

[Airtids]

OK then anyone want to explain why the fires in the Burton area of the Arrow Lakes, weren't touched for a week both times until they were out of control despite the locals yelling for someone to come. As soon as they were out of control, the calvary arrived and fought it for the following 3 weeks for a cost of million dollars, both times, within a few years of each other.

Or how about on the hwy that runs west from Quesnel to the small town of Nazko, right in the heart of the fire area two years ago. Two major fires were burning there and the forest service didn't touch them for five days. In this case, Canfor Forest Products already had logging rights, so they called in a crew from California who had it contained in a matter of days while our local government funded fire fighters sat at the base.

I've heard from people in the industry that this is common practice, especially nearing the end of the season. As Cat said, it's as simple as here's your budget and if you don't use it all, we'll be asking you why next year and trying to give you less. If you go over, we'll probably even give you more. It's not a conspiracy, road construction is always busiest at the end of the season, the hospital always replaces drugs, sheets, medical supplies that don't expire for a year, and the forest fire fighters let things burn. The only difference is the public doesn't realize that you're simply a business trying to make money, like any other branch of government.

So if you are saying that isn't true, then I'd love to hear why they couldn't spare one chopper or a ground crew even, for any day that week but the following week they had more than a dozen aircraft fighting it. They were all remote areas that don't get any publicity and this happens every time according to the locals.

I can't speak about Quesnel, but Arrow is in my zone, and I can give you some insight into what goes on, because I'm in the air, and on the radio. Truth is; that area around Whatshan, beside being a lightning trap, is pretty sparsely populated.
In 2003, Burton was FOC. There was no intention to let it burn, there simply were no resources available. The fire was tanked, multiple times, but simply burned through. I've seen it happen lots. A tanker or a bucket machine is not going to put a fire OUT. The LAST thing anyone was trying to do that summer was 'create more work'. The protection budget was so blown it wouldn't have made a difference. When you get a fire like that, the decision is generally made to let it burn (especially in remote areas, for obvious reasons), and focus the resources elsewhere when there is a possibility of those resources actually doing some good.
Last summer, the fire was VERY persistent, and once again, resources were stretched between Slocan and Argenta. Fire was tanked, and then from what I recall a Kamov AND a 212 worked it for a week or more straight. BCFS doesn't just reposition machines willy-nilly for fear that other areas will get hot and they will get caught short, thereby eliminating the possibility of IMMEDIATE response and getting them knocked down before they get too big.
Occasionally a bad call is made that comes back and bites some Fire Control Officer on the ass. Smoking tree, throw an A-star and a bucket at it for a few loads, and call it out. Sure enough, a whiff of wind and things are off again. This is one of the reasons why the detection aircraft are continually revisiting 'old' fires to double-triple check them.
Don't kid yourself: BCFS doesn't set a budget based on year-by-year expenditures, more like decade to decade analysis. Year-to-year simply isn't realistic due to the dynamic nature of the activity. What I'm realising myself now, is that, sometimes, working for a massive organisation (like BCFS) has it's drawbacks in terms of getting things done quickly and efficiently.

[old metal]

This could use a thread of its own, Whats the all time best Tanker Base movie?

[Cat Driver]

The Cape Breton whore?

[scrambled_legs]

Airtids, thanks for trying to explain it. Whether it's bureaucratic bs or making work, the end result that I've always witnessed, is a really large fire with numerous aircraft working it, that a few days prior was a small fire with no-one working it. So if the decision is made to let it burn, why does a swarm of fighters show up after it really starts too? I understand you're spread thin but if you brought a whole crew out there after it exploded, wouldn't it make more sense to bring one guy in to contain it before it explodes? I know there's a lot more to it than pissing on a campfire but twice these fires were basically a campfire and twice they destroyed 1,000s of acres of beautiful forest and cost hug dollars to stop.

If a guy could create a rapid response program, it would sure save a lot of money and a lot of forests. I'm not sure how different Alberta's system is but I know that they have dedicated air crews on 24/7 alert, ready to respond to any calls immediately. They have a number of crews positioned throughout, working Fire bosses (converted Air Tractors) and they'll swoop in with a swarm of 10 or more and extinguish anything before it gets to be large. BC has a lot more trees than Alberta, and maybe Alberta spends more dollars per acre on fire crews, but whatever they do, it just doesn't seem to be as big of a problem on the other side of the rocks.

[wannabatp]

This thread went a little bit off track, but never mind.

I didn't mean to imply that tanker pilots are old or actually close to retirement. Just that you have nothing left to prove. If you guys don't fly, it doesn't really matter to you, apart from the boredom factor I suppose.

So far this year, I got about 30 hours flight time (incl PPC and fire specific training) in 7 weeks and no fires yet. Lots of stand-by and on call though. Not exactly the time builder I was hoping for.

I don't know if others outside of La Belle Province are aware, but PQ is somewhat different in that fire management is done by a private company (SOPFEU) and the tankers are government owned and operated. Which I guess makes sense when you consider a CL-415 is upwards of $25-30 million apiece, and they have 10 of them! Plus a couple of 415Ts and another 4 CL-215s. What company could afford all that hardware? Other aircraft (patrol and bird dog, and helicopters) are from private industry on summer long contracts.

By the way, I think our season is done. Rain in the forecast everyday for the next week. (sigh) Good luck to all affected.

Cheers!

[osprey]

Wannabe

Is proving something all aviation is to you? Reading a few posts of yours it seems that you want the best toys and to show them off and telling the whole av community your hours this summer season.

Life and flying aren't a race, just sit back and enjoy that you get paid to lounge around all summer.

The Prey