In Fire Country, Some Doubt New Air Tactics

For decades, the rumble of aircraft piston engines here signaled the start of forest fire season, as a fleet of half-century-old air tankers took off to battle infernos across the West.

This summer, Greybull is quiet. Most of the planes have been grounded.

The U.S. Forest Service issued the order last year, after two tankers operated by Hawkins & Powers Aviation Inc. crashed while fighting forest fires.

The first accident happened over the eastern Sierra when wings tore and fell off a 45-year-old, four-engine C-130A Hercules, the second when a converted PB4Y-2 Privateer Navy patrol bomber broke apart in midair over Colorado. Five residents of Greybull, a town of 1,815 where Hawkins & Powers has its headquarters, died.

After an investigation, the Forest Service put 11 of the nation’s 44 largest firefighting aircraft off-limits for federal firefighting work, saying the old aircraft had structural flaws. The move effectively took out of commission all but two of the air tankers that Hawkins & Powers owns.

The move devastated Greybull’s largest employer and raised concern that there might not be enough large air tankers to fight what is expected to be another scorching season of wildfires.

“There is an awful lot of country to cover,” said Sen. Craig Thomas (R-Wyo.), “and I’m not sure we have enough large air tankers to handle all the forest fires.”

The crashes also focused new attention on federal agencies’ reliance on privately owned planes to combat the blazes that char millions of acres every summer. A committee appointed by Congress found that there is too little oversight of private craft that follow lesser safety standards than the few aerial fighters owned by the government.

Under a Depression-era law, the government depends chiefly on an armada of about 200 aircraft, mostly flown by private firms, to battle forest fires. Many of the bigger planes were built during the Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower administrations.

The 11 grounded planes -- six C-130As and five PB4Y-2s -- were among the largest in the fleet of air tankers, each capable of carrying up to 3,000 gallons, three times more than most firefighting planes can haul. These big fire bombers can fly as slowly as 120 mph and swoop over difficult-to-reach areas, sometimes just a few hundred feet above ground, to drop retardant in advance of a fire.

Federal officials say that taking so many of the big tanker planes out of commission will have minimal effect because the government has hired smaller, single-engine planes to do the work that the larger craft once did. It has 67 single-engine air tankers under contract, up from 37 in 2000.

Janelle Smith, spokeswoman for the National Interagency Fire Center, a coalition of the Forest Service and other federal agencies that coordinate fighting forest fires, said the center is successfully using “a different strategy and tactics” this season.

But it’s probably too early to know for sure whether the strategy will work: The fires in the West so far this season have been relatively small.

One month into the season, wildfires haven’t broken out as quickly as last year, when a near-record 7 million acres were scorched. Still, federal officials expect an “above normal” fire season this summer because of drought conditions in the West.

In June, 300 homes were destroyed near Tucson as 60-mph gusts fanned flames across more than 30,000 acres of parched pine trees, while 700 acres burned and 200 people were evacuated in Albuquerque.

The Forest Service is particularly concerned about drought-plagued areas in Southern California, including Los Padres, Angeles and Cleveland national forests. This week, the agency issued a warning, saying that “conditions are reaching extreme levels” and that a surge in Fourth of July fireworks and campfires could increase the number of fires this weekend.

“Fire organization is starting to shift more toward initial attacks, when fires are smaller, rather than using air resources when they become large crown fires,” said Mark Bickham, national single-engine tanker program manager for the Bureau of Land Management. “These smaller planes provide the flexibility to do that.”

Thomas contends that it will be difficult for smaller planes and helicopters “to make up for the large air tankers. We’re going to lose some ground.”

Gene Powers, co-founder of Hawkins & Powers, said federal agencies are wrong to rely on smaller craft. “It is a mistake to believe that helicopter water drops or small splashes by single-engine crop-dusters will have the same effectiveness as a full-scale, large-air-tanker drop,” he said.

After the two crashes last year, the committee appointed by Congress recommended an overhaul of the National Interagency Fire Center’s methods. Among the panel’s findings: Planes owned by private contractors are subject to lower safety standards than federally operated planes, and no federal agency has full authority over the private contractors.

The panel was particularly critical of the way the Forest Service was running the program, saying that contractors were “focused on how to safely get the best aircraft and crews put to work with limited financial support.” Contractors like Hawkins & Powers were “directed by the government ... to do the best with what they had,” the committee said, and weren’t encouraged to modernize their fleets.

At a hearing in Washington in March, Jim Hall, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board and co-chairman of the congressional committee, warned that the panel’s report had so far been ignored.

“The present system has not been fixed,” he said, “and it is certainly a situation that needs to be addressed.”

Once the nation’s largest operator of fire bombers, Hawkins & Powers has seen its firefighting revenue drop from $9.5 million last year to about $500,000 so far this year. It now has only two planes and several helicopters left in service for firefighting. “It’s been devastating,” said Duane Powers, Gene’s son, and director of the firm’s fixed-wing operations. “Along with the emotional toll of losing our friends and neighbors, we’ve been hit really hard financially.”

The company has so far laid off 15 of its 150 employees and is trying to scrape by with more aircraft-refurbishing work. Hawkins & Powers recently won a contract from the Pentagon to refurbish some of the Air Force’s C-130H military cargo planes.

Federal investigators blamed last year’s crashes on structural flaws.

The Lockheed C-130A had a stress crack in the center wing section, which was undetectable because it had been covered during modification work while it was in service with the Air Force, according to a preliminary accident report.

As for the PB4Y-2, built in the 1940s, investigators believe an improper assembly process led to a production flaw in the wing that didn’t show up until six decades later.

All 11 of the two models in the federal firefighting fleet were grounded and may never be brought back into service.

Duane Powers called the decision a “politically expedient solution.” But federal officials say that to ensure the safety of crews this season, they had no choice.