Helicopter Pilots Defy Danger to Get the Drop on Brush Fires

It is a black, swirling beast of smoke and scorching heat, hundreds of feet tall, inhaling embers from a brush fire below and spreading more infernos downwind.

Helicopter pilots know it by a more clinical, technical term: a convection column, the tall, smoky pillar of hot air rising high above a fire. But it doesn’t hint at the volcanic temperatures that can instantly blister paint off a chopper. Nor does it convey the risk of flying so close.

“We don’t fly through it, but usually underneath it or right next to it,” said Karl Cotton, a Los Angeles County fire helicopter pilot. “Sometimes the heat can be intense.”

Braving risks posed by heat and obstacles, pilots from the Los Angeles County and city fire departments made hundreds of water drops Tuesday night and Wednesday in battling the Glendale-La Canada Flintridge fire. The versatility, speed and maneuverability of the helicopters once again spotlighted their importance in battling the region’s wind-driven brush fires.

By Friday afternoon, the Glendale fire was fully extinguished, authorities said, after it consumed 524 acres and a police building and drew more than 1,000 firefighters. Meanwhile, east of Ojai, the so-called Ranch fire was nearly contained in the Los Padres National Forest after burning 3,800 acres and destroying a home and a barn. Some 1,600 firefighters--half of them state inmates--had battled the fire, authorities said.

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Most of the pilots who fought the Glendale fire are members of the county Fire Department’s air operations unit based at the its heliport next to Whiteman Airport in Pacoima. Although they will fly at night to protect threatened structures, county fire officials said it was unusual to use three county helicopters at one time. A fourth Los Angeles city fire chopper also assisted in the daring night efforts. Two water-dropping airplanes joined the effort after daybreak.

The Pacoima unit is staffed by a dozen pilots who fly eight helicopters. Two are poised to respond to calls seven days a week, 24 hours a day, but only about a third of their work is on fires. The majority of their calls are for stranded hikers, traffic accidents or medical emergencies, said Capt. Dan Gordon. When they are called out to a fire, Gordon said helicopters play a vital role to support firefighting efforts.

It is a job in which years of experience--flying for the military, U.S. Forest Service or private companies--pays off during a major event such as this week’s brush fire.

“We call it ‘production flying,’ ” Cotton said. “We are trying to deliver as much water as accurately as possible. We are making a lot of quick runs.”

Cotton, 42, has flown helicopters for 20 years, fighting brush fires with the Forest Service and doing rescues for the Arizona Highway Patrol. He’s been with the Los Angeles County fire air unit for 10 years. At 11 p.m. Tuesday, when he climbed into Copter 11, a Bell 412, the fire had already jumped the Glendale Freeway and was moving southwest toward hillside homes.

Blaring a brief siren as a warning, Cotton swooped low, sometimes to just 20 feet off the ground, while making a water drop. He could see dozens of homeowners hosing down their rooftops. Not far away, an apartment complex was threatened. And a hilltop communications tower also needed protection. Each would receive multiple water drops.

“It’s like a war, you can’t do it all from the air,” said John Finnerty, a county fire helicopter pilot for 19 years. “The ground troops have to get to it.”

Finnerty, 51, said carefully targeted air drops cool the blaze and enable bulldozers, hand crews and engine companies to better attack it. If the flames get knocked down to 2 or 3 feet, ground units are better able do their job, he said.

Critical to the success of the helicopter drops were the quick turnarounds at the staging area above the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge. Choppers were resupplied with water by fire engines that were able to fill their 360-gallon tanks in about a minute, said county fire crewman Mark Camp.

For Cotton and Tom Short, who flew Tuesday night through Wednesday morning, conditions grew more favorable: The winds eased up after 1 a.m. and the unusually bright full moon illuminated the rugged hillsides and Erector-set-like power poles and lines.

“It was one of those nights you could see forever,” Short said. “One of those nights when everything was working in our favor.”

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Dispatched soon after the fire was detected, a trio of county fire choppers worked through the night, radioing ground units about changes in fire behavior, wind patterns and directions of the flames. In eight hours, Short made about 78 water-dropping trips; Cotton completed 128. Crewmen and fellow pilots say Cotton’s work was impressive, a point modestly shrugged off by Cotton who said it wasn’t a record.

But helicopter water drops are as much about accuracy as frequency, pilots say.

Wednesday afternoon, Finnerty, a former Army pilot who flew in Vietnam, maneuvered Copter 14 around some lingering hot spots. He circled his Bell 205, the same type of craft he flew in Vietnam, around the parched hillside.

After identifying his target--a small brushy patch, smoldering with a few flames--he circled back, eased the chopper so close to the hillside he could see the faces of nearby hand crews, issued a siren, then made the drop.

The workhorse capability of the helicopter units is crucial to the overall firefighting effort, Finnerty said. “You’ve gotta have all your links in place,” he said. “We can do things the guys on the ground can’t, but we all work together.”