Bill Would Keep Firefighting Planes at Work in the Winter

In California’s calendar of natural risk, January and February bring to mind floods, not wildfires.

Yet last February in San Diego County, fire destroyed 45 homes and scorched nine square miles. In January 2001, also in San Diego County, a tossed cigarette exploded into a blaze that gutted six homes.

Given such rainy-season fires, it makes no sense to state Sen. Bill Morrow (R-Oceanside) that, from December through March, the state typically pulls its firefighting planes back to Sacramento for maintenance.

He has written a bill that would require the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to keep two air tankers--the hulking planes that can drop five tons of fire-choking retardant at a time--based in Southern California through the winter and ready to attack at a moment’s notice.

Morrow said he shouldn’t have to pass legislation to accomplish what he thinks the department should be doing as a matter of good policy.

The $1.6-million annual cost of keeping two air tankers at ready, he said, “is nothing for something that is a matter of public safety, lives and property.”

But state firefighters, who protect much of California’s private wild lands, say that, while two to six air tankers are typically based in Southern California from April through November, the number of acres burned in the region each winter does not warrant keeping active a crew of 14 people to service, load and fly the planes. Air tankers would not have helped in the initial attack on the two San Diego County fires because it was too windy for aircraft, they say.

“Our experience is, we’re able to put out the fires in the winter with the resources available to us,” said Louis Blumberg, the Department of Forestry’s deputy director for communications and legislation. “We think it’s not the best use of the state’s resources.”

Fire officials also view Morrow’s bill as an unnecessary intrusion by the Legislature into the specialized job of deploying people, planes and helicopters around a flammable, populous state.

They say they fear a precedent that would have lawmakers jockeying to dedicate some of the state’s 23 air tankers, nine helicopters and 13 tactical planes to their districts.

“These are statewide assets, and they have to move where they’re needed,” said James M. Wright, the department’s deputy director for fire protection. “We’ve got to be able to run our fire department. We appreciate all their support, but we also want their understanding that this is our business.”

Morrow’s bill, SB 2020, passed the Senate Natural Resources Committee on a 6-2 vote Tuesday and goes next to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

It would dedicate $1.6 million each year from the state budget to keeping two air tankers and one tactical plane, used to direct aerial firefights, based somewhere between Santa Barbara and the Mexican border.

“It’s pay now or pay later,” said Dianne Jacob, a San Diego County supervisor. “What we’re saying is, put up the money, station the air tankers here for those extra four months. It’s a good fiscal decision, and it may save lives and property.”

Blumberg said air tankers can always be flown from Sacramento to Southern California in an hour and a half, and pilots are on call, even in the winter.

Besides, air tankers aren’t always the best way to attack a fire, he said, and cannot be flown safely on days when winds exceed 35 mph.

Late-season fires in Southern California tend to be driven by wind rather than a tinder-dry landscape, said Matt Mathes, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service, which protects the one-fifth of California designated as national forest.

“In general, our contracts for air tankers and helicopters run from June 1 until about mid-November,” he said.

“If fire conditions warrant, on a case-by-case, year-by-year basis, we can bring them on early or keep them late.”

On Feb. 10, the day a brush fire swept through avocado groves and mansions in Fallbrook, it was too windy to use an air tanker on the initial attack, Blumberg said, although a tanker arrived from Sacramento the following day.