Desert Outpost Directs Aerial Attacks

The order to halt chemical drops crackled over the radio as Mike Lynn in his converted transport plane skirted the southern flank of the 3,000-acre Silverado fire late Friday morning.

Within minutes, Lynn had landed the C-138 Air tanker at Ryan Air Attack Base here, about 25 miles east of the fire. Because of shifting winds, heavy smoke and growing uncertainty about how to encircle the fire, officials on the ground had temporarily called off the aerial assault.

The tactical order was a welcome break for Lynn and the other pilots stationed at Ryan field, a joint federal and state facility considered the world’s busiest air tanker base.

“It feels good to stretch and get some fresh air: It gets hot and real smoky in that cockpit,” said Lynn, popping the top on a soda. The tall, bearded Minnesotan had already shed his green flight overalls and was sitting atop a cooler in shorts and a T-shirt.

Reflected in the lenses of his aviator’s sunglasses was a fleet of fully fueled surplus aircraft waiting for the word to resume their attack on the Silverado fire, which had begun Tuesday in the rugged high country along the Orange-Riverside county line.

Retardant Dumped

By noon Friday, the tanker pilots at Ryan had emptied 180,000 gallons of pink fire retardant on the blaze believed set by an arsonist. Piloting the tankers is no easy task, but the Silverado has been particularly tricky.

“It is the most difficult fire we’ve had in several years,” said Don Cockrum, battalion chief of air operations for the California Department of Forestry.

Winds, normally a dreaded adversary of firefighters, have been missing from the Silverado fire. While a blessing in one sense, it has left the skies over the stubborn blaze socked in with smoke, making it difficult to drop chemicals and water.

As a result, the aerial battle has been restricted to the southern and western fronts of the fire.

“It gets awfully frustrating when you can’t lend a hand to the guys on the ground,” said Cockrum, who was grounded Friday, along with his pilots. Besides overseeing operations at the base, Cockrum, a 22-year veteran of the forest service, is the “eye in the sky” for tanker pilots, radioing drop coordinates and wind conditions from his small twin-engine plane.

This week, Cockrum’s marching orders have come from fire officials orchestrating the battle from Irvine Regional Park in eastern Orange County. But on any given day during fire season, April 1 through Oct. 1, the call could come from any one of six Southern California counties.

Based in Desert

Air tankers from Ryan are used to fight fires from Ventura to San Diego County and as far east as the Colorado River. Four tankers--two state and two federal--are based permanently at the field on the outskirts of this retirement community of 30,000.

The state owns two World War II-vintage Grumman S-2F air tankers, while the U.S. Forest Service uses bigger and more modern DC-4s. In all, California has 17 air tankers; the federal government 33. Pilots who fly the air tankers are contracted on a season-to-season basis.

“Tanker pilots are a rare breed,” Cockrum said. “There are only about 100 of them in the world. They are a tightknit group that sticks to themselves.”

An air tanker pilot may go weeks without work. But when a fire breaks out, it may be days before he has a chance to call home again.

One former pilot decribed the existence as “hours and hours of boredom, then 30 seconds of sheer terror.”

On Friday, Lynn and other pilots at the Hemet base downplayed the danger of their work. But Cockrum said every flight carries a risk.

“There is the wind, smoke, terrain and then the fire,” Cockrum said. “When you are going 115 miles per hour, only 150 feet off the ground, there is little room for error.”

Rich Ruggiero, 41, of Hemet, has been flying air tankers 12 years. It is a mechanical breakdown more than the actual flying that he fears most. Many of the tanker pilots perform their own maintainance on the planes.

Worrying About Planes

“Making the drops isn’t as unnerving as worrying about the plane’s condition,” Ruggiero said. “Every time you hear a strange noise you wonder if your number is up.”

Cockrum said about one air tanker a year crashes in this country. Last week, a DC-4 went down in the New Mexico mountains, killing the pilot and a co-pilot.

“You try not to think about that,” said Lynn, who in the off-season lives in northern Minnesota, where he hunts and ice-fishes. He arrived at the Ryan base on Wednesday after two months of fighting fires in Idaho.

Firefighters and foresters have been experimenting with the use of helicopters and planes against fires since the 1930s. They have tried everything from beer kegs filled with water to retardant-filled tanks on B-29 bombers.

At Ryan, Cockrum’s ground crew prepares the fire retardant, which is ammonia sulfate, a common fertilizer. It is trucked to the base as a fine powder. Water and a pink dye is then added creating a liquid mush the consistency of “melted strawberry ice cream,” Cockrum said. The dye is added so the accuracy of the drop can be assessed from the air.

On the average, each plane can make four drops on the Silverado fire in a three-hour period before refueling. The planes carry 800 to 2,000 gallons of retardant.

The tankers fly until dusk, when it becomes too dangerous.

“It is hardly a glamorous job,” Ruggiero said. “But it sure beats bookkeeping.”