State details its aerial response to wildfires

SACRAMENTO -- State fire officials Saturday released their first detailed account of the highly criticized aerial assault at the start of last month’s wildfires that destroyed more than 2,000 homes in Southern California.

The documents attempt to answer allegations by federal lawmakers, military officials and others that the state did not effectively marshal all its available air resources as the series of blazes began roaring out of control.

In particular, an earlier Associated Press investigation revealed that military helicopters sat grounded for days, in part because of a shortage of state fire “spotters” who were required to be onboard.

The documents obtained under the California Public Records Act answer some questions while raising others. How much the helicopters could have helped is unknown, but the documents reveal a more detailed and, at times, different version of events than previously provided by the state’s top fire and emergency officials.

For example, state fire officials last month said high winds had grounded virtually all aircraft in the first two days after the flames broke out. Therefore, they reasoned, it would not have mattered whether additional state fire spotters had been available to ride in the military choppers.

The documents, however, show that although pilots were hampered by strong winds, a dozen air tankers and five state helicopters flew more than 70 hours in firefighting missions on Oct. 21, the first full day of the firestorm.

The documents also reveal that number was a fraction of the tankers and helicopters available in the state that day.

Twenty-eight of 52 aircraft that the state was tracking for firefighting efforts remained grounded, and high winds were not listed as the reason. Rather, state officials had not requested them or they were being kept in other parts of the state in case fires broke out there.

Mike Padilla, aviation chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said some of the aircraft not called in to fight the Southern California blazes in the first days helped extinguish smaller fires that popped up elsewhere in the state.

He also said the spreadsheets and other statistics released Saturday fail to capture the heroic efforts by the pilots and crews who fought the fires, which were being fanned by Santa Ana wind gusts up to 100 mph.

“We were making desperate attempts, and the wind was just incredible,” Padilla said in a telephone interview.

The series of wildfires consumed 780 square miles, killed 10 people and injured more than 100 firefighters.

The state fire department released documents detailing the scope of the aerial assault and the availability of firefighting aircraft after the Associated Press and other news outlets requested them.

The AP reported Oct. 25 that state and federal rules kept nearly two dozen military helicopters, including those from the Marine Corps, Navy and California Army National Guard, grounded for at least a day after the fires broke out.

Having too few fire spotters was a large part of the problem.

State rules require that fire spotters, also called helicopter managers, from the state fire department accompany all choppers to coordinate water or retardant drops.

Padilla said the state has determined that it had enough spotters for the helicopters it knew were available but had to scramble to find spotters for the Marine and some of the Navy helicopters because it wasn’t expecting them.

“When we found out how many military and Marine helicopters were available, we put in orders and began trying to find qualified managers that weren’t already assigned,” he said.

The state has only a limited number of fire captains trained to direct water and retardant drops from helicopters. When they are not performing those duties, they are commanding crews on the ground. In many cases, captains had to be located and pulled off fire lines to fly with the military, Padilla said.

The state ultimately determined that it wouldn’t find enough captains to fill the role and abandoned rules that each military helicopter have one. That decision was made after flames had claimed almost all of the more than 2,000 homes destroyed during the blazes.

The documents released Saturday also show that a lack of fire spotters kept National Guard helicopters stationed near Long Beach grounded four hours longer than officials have previously acknowledged.

Tower logs and reports from helicopter crews show that on Oct. 22, the Monday after the wildfires flared up, the helicopters could have flown if state fire spotters had arrived earlier. Three National Guard helicopter crews were ready and waiting to take off by 8:30 that morning, but the spotters didn’t show up until 11:30 a.m.

Once they did arrive, the officials waited another hour before receiving orders to take off. By the time the spotters were ready to fly, high winds had kicked up and grounded the aircraft. None of the helicopters could lift off until the following morning.