Fire Rekindles Debate on Use of Air Guard : Disaster: Pilot Vince Cocca was among those put on hold by bureaucracy and malfunctions. There’s a move in Congress to amend a Depression-era law that stymied planes.

He trained and trained. Then he waited and waited.

That was as it should be, he concedes.

“You’re expected to train for something you hope you never get the chance to use,” said Vince Cocca, a pilot in the 146th Tactical Airlift Wing of the California Air National Guard.

Last May, Cocca, a trim, crisply stepping 35, spent a week in Boise, Ida., learning to fly the hulking Hercules C-130 transport plane at an altitude of 100 feet into mountain canyons roiling with flames and obscured in smoke, to bomb the flames with liquid retardant.

He learned to do aggressive “pushovers”--skimming over a ridge at 110 knots and dropping the airplane’s nose to follow the downhill slope, “10 degrees nose-down, 15 degrees nose-down, whatever it takes.”

Then he waited for his first fire. It came on Tuesday, Oct. 26, when more than a dozen fires erupted in Southern California.

Nothing in his training had prepared Cocca for the waiting he endured over the next 24 hours--his plane idled on the runway as the fire burned into view only miles away.

It was a day of impotence as the Guard stood ready but was restrained by bureaucracy and malfunctions. And along with tantalizing Cocca, then denying him his first taste of action, the fires rekindled a long-running debate over just what it takes, legally, for the state to get any firefighting benefit from the Air National Guard, which is partially supported by state taxes.

The upshot is a move in Congress, following an outpouring of complaints that houses burned while the Air Guard’s planes sat glued to the ground by red tape, to amend the Depression-era law that hamstrings the process.

When the call came on Oct. 26, Cocca, who lives in Lake View Terrace, immediately reported his availability for duty and secured a leave from his civilian job as an L-1011 flight engineer for TWA.

Cocca was put on standby as co-pilot on MAFFS-6, one of the two C-130s at the Channel Islands Air National Guard base near Oxnard equipped with the Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System, capable of spraying 2,500 gallons of retardant out its cargo bay door on each pass.

Champing at the bit for action, Cocca waited at the base on the Ventura coast for an order to fly. This time the waiting would be excruciating. Wednesday passed, and no order came. The bureaucratically arcane and mechanically cumbersome process for mobilizing the Air Guard and its C-130s would unfold at its own slow pace.

The agonizing process began about 8 a.m. Wednesday when the California Department of Forestry decided to call up every available air tanker to fight the brush fires spreading all over Southern California.

The request was forwarded to the U.S. Forest Service Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Ida.

There Dick Stauber, the center’s director, began filling those requests. By 10 a.m., he had commercial air tankers from fields in Goleta, Hemet and Lancaster working the fires.

But he didn’t immediately mobilize the eight military C-130 firefighters based around the United States. Stauber was restrained by U.S. law: The 1932 Economy Act prohibits the military from competing with private enterprise. Stauber was required to ensure that every reasonably available privately owned commercial air tanker was on the job before he called up the military planes.

He said he didn’t make that determination until 2:30 p.m. that Wednesday, when he sent a request to the Pentagon--which owns the C-130s the Guard flies--to activate the eight planes. The order reached the 146th at Port Hueneme at 4 p.m.

By then, the fire was creeping into view of Cocca and the other fliers on the Tarmac. But the planes could still not go aloft.

As yet, there was no retardant for them to drop.

Unlike the commercial air tanker bases, which have permanent facilities for preparing retardant, the Air National Guard base relies on a portable mixing plant, affectionately called Club Mud by its operators, to stir up water and a chemical powder into a bright magenta brew called Phos-Chek.

Owned and operated by the Monsanto Co., which manufactures the retardant, it is kept at the base during the fire season but Monsanto workers still had to be summoned to set it up.

They ran into mechanical snags that weren’t worked out until 10:30 p.m.--too late for the day-flying C-130s to go into action.

Finally, on Thursday morning, 24 hours after the first call for their help, the Air National Guard went into action. Later that day, four more Hercules C-130s arrived, two from the Wyoming Air National Guard in Cheyenne, and two from the Air Force Reserve at Colorado Springs, Colo.

By then, Cocca was out of the picture. He had stood a complete shift Wednesday, without being called, and was replaced by a new crew Thursday. He didn’t get to fly.

A good soldier, Cocca stifled his disappointment. But his commanding officer spoke for him.

“The Guard was absolutely ready and leaning forward, ready to fire,” said Major Gen. Tandy Bozeman, California adjutant general, who commands both the Army and Air National Guard.

“You don’t know how frustrating that is to crews, because they want to get into the fight. They were literally watching the fires two miles off the runway and waiting for authorization.”

Bozeman said he has no desire to take business away from commercial air tankers, but thinks it should be made possible for the Forest Service to call up every airplane available, including the National Guard’s, the moment a fire gets out of hand.

“I would contend that the citizens of California deserve faster service if we have the National Guard airplanes and can get to the fire and make a difference,” he said.

The Thousand Oaks fire and several others in Ventura County went on to burn 67,000 acres and 67 structures, including 43 houses and mobile homes from Oct. 26 to 30.

Almost as soon as the real fires were out, a political firestorm erupted over the delays in getting the Air Guard into action.

“The events of this last week clearly show that the firefighting control system is broken, and we have to get it fixed now,” said an irate Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Ventura). The system, Gallegly said, “is like not being able to call the police until you’ve found out that every private security company is too busy to help.”

Gallegly introduced a bill Thursday that would exempt U.S. firefighting efforts from the 1932 Economy Act. It would also direct the U.S. Forest Service to consider establishing a threat-level system similar to the Defense Department’s so that the Air Guard could begin a limited mobilization whenever the Santa Ana winds blow strong.

The proposal immediately gained backing from other local leaders, including Rep. Anthony Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills) and Los Angeles City Councilwoman Laura Chick.

Forest Service officials chafe at the suggestion that they mismanaged the operation. They point out that the mobile airborne units--designed in the 1970s specifically for the military C-130s--are intended as backup for the commercial tankers rather than initial attack planes.

There are only eight military planes, compared to some 40 commercial tankers available, said Stauber, the director of the national firefighting center in Idaho. The interagency contract for the military planes calls for them to be available for deployment within 24 hours, not instantaneously.

“It is normally a next-morning backup system,” he said.

The issue of whether the Air Guard should be freed of the strictures of the 61-year-old law has been debated for years, arising repeatedly after destructive fires in years past. But in this case, politicians and the public were particularly angered because of an accident of geography--the fire was right on the very flank of the Channel Islands base, where for 24 hours the military planes sat idle, although they were 50 miles nearer than the commercial tanker called for the first attack on the fire.

The system, Stauber insists, worked the way it was supposed to, despite the dramatic juxtaposition of flames and grounded planes.

Nonetheless, Stauber conceded that the mobilization of the eight military fire tankers could be streamlined.

“What we could probably do is, when we see that something is coming up that is dramatic, set up retardant bases before we mobilize the airplanes,” Stauber said. “I believe that is something we’ll determine a way to do, set up that retardant base in advance.”

It wasn’t long before the continuing eruption of firestorms produced a dramatic demonstration of how much more effective the Channel Islands firefighting operation could be.

Because of the forecast of continuing Santa Ana winds, the military firefighting operation was kept on alert over the weekend after the Thousand Oaks fire. Planes and crews remained on standby. Club Mud was up and running.

So when fire broke out Tuesday morning at 10:46 a.m., the Air Guard crews swung into action in less than two hours. Their planes were ready and charged with retardant even before the flight order came.

“They were cocked, loaded and ready to go, yes, indeed,” said Col. John Iffland, the base commander.

At 12:15 p.m., the Angeles National Forest dispatch center received a request for air tankers, said David Reider, public information officer for the U.S. Forest Service’s South Zone command in Riverside. The request was relayed to the Channel Islands base at 12:26 p.m. The first plane was in the air at 12:45 p.m.

Through Tuesday and Wednesday, C-130s flew 140 missions from the base, dropping 3.5 million gallons of retardant; two commercial tankers also landed there to recharge their retardant tanks.

“From what I’ve been told by people on the ground and the Forest Service, the Guard was an invaluable asset during these fires,” said Michael Drake, public information officer for the base.

And, finally, Cocca got his ride, flying four missions as co-pilot beside Maj. Jim Mock of Thousand Oaks, and returning Thursday as an observer in another airplane.

“It’s breathtaking,” Cocca said. “It beats any Space Mountain I’ve ever seen.”

Next time, he said, he’ll be the pilot.

How Hercules fights fires

The Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System (MAFFS) can spray 2,500 gallons of chemical fire retardant from the cargo bay of a Hercules C-130 transport plane in 4.7 to 11 seconds.

The fire-retardant agent, manufactured by Monsanto, is a bright magenta liquid called Phos-Chek.

The Pressure System

The self-contained unit slides into the back of the fuselage on rollers and is secured with bolts. It consists of:

2 spray nozzles that fold into the bay during flight and then extend for discharge.

5 tanks

Loadmaster’s station

The co-pilot discharges the fluid from the cockpit on order from a Forest Service pilot in a lead plane that precedes the C-130 over the target.

Source: AIR International magazine

Research by Doug Smith