Lawmakers Rethink Decision to Ground Firefighting Planes

Lawmakers called Thursday for an emergency inspection program to address safety concerns about 33 aerial tankers grounded this week, saying the loss of the planes would hobble efforts to fight forest fires in the West.

“We’re trying to see if we can’t rescue some of these tankers,” Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), chairman of the House Resources subcommittee on forests and forest health, said at a hearing on the outlook for the fire season. “If there’s a crisis, we’ll act.”

After federal investigators concluded that there was no system for guaranteeing the safety of the aging tankers, the U.S. Forest Service on Monday canceled its contracts with several private companies that provided the planes.

Two tankers crashed in 2002 when their wings fell off because of metal fatigue, killing five crew members aboard the planes.

Lawmakers roundly criticized the Forest Service decision, which affects nine aircraft used to fight fires in California, and questioned whether a back-up plan to deploy heavy-lift helicopters, some smaller planes and some military tankers would do the job. The grounded tankers are considered especially useful for dumping large amounts of fire retardant and water in the critical initial stages of firefighting operations.

“It seems like an arbitrary decision has been made here,” said Rep. Peter A. DeFazio (D-Ore.). “The contingency plans for helicopters and smaller planes just don’t move the volume we need. There is no substitute for these big planes.”

Fire season started early in California this year, and forecasts point to above-average risk in parts of the West.

Terry McHale, public policy director for the California Department of Forestry Firefighters Assn., said grounding the tankers would make California communities more vulnerable during a wildfire.

“It’s dangerous, and it could be possibly devastating,” he said.

Walden has scheduled a meeting Tuesday with officials from the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board and the Interior Department to determine whether the FAA can carry out emergency inspections.

Though that may seem like a solution, problems stand in the way. The FAA lacks the legal authority to issue safety certifications for aircraft used for government missions. The agency cannot assess whether the planes -- retired military aircraft that may be decades old -- are safe for the firefighting duty they perform for the government.

Canceling the tanker contracts could cost the government $20 million to $45 million in penalties -- another loss for a federal firefighting program that lawmakers said was hampered by a chronic lack of funding.

Fire season expenses have exceeded $1 billion in each of the last two years, but funding is set by a formula that has covered less than one-third of the cost. Money has to be borrowed from other programs to pay for fighting fires.

Mark Rey, a senior Agriculture Department official who oversees the Forest Service, said that canceling the tanker contracts was the only option after an investigation by the transporation safety board found that there was no system for guaranteeing the safety of the planes. The Forest Service has no technical expertise to set up such a system, he said, and the FAA is precluded from doing so.

“In essence, there was no way available to ensure the airworthiness of the large fixed-wing aircraft,” Rey said. The decision “was crystal clear, between accepting the level of risk and seeking alternate aircraft that don’t have that level of risk.”

The new fleet will have 44 helicopters and planes, and will be able to move more water and chemicals per hour than the tankers, Rey said. The tankers dropped 20% of the water and chemicals used last year, he said.

“It’s not that we’re replacing the majority of our capacity -- we’re replacing a relatively small proportion,” he said. “The symbolism of the large tankers in many people’s minds was greater than the amount of material they were delivering.”

An independent commission that reviewed the state of federal aerial firefighting programs in 2002 endorsed the Forest Service decision. “The fleet is unsustainable,” said Texas State Forester James Hull, co-chairman of the panel.

But the aerial tanker industry said the contract cancellation was too sweeping. Both of the planes that crashed in 2002 belonged to Hawkins & Powers Aviation of Greybull, Wyo. Other companies should not be punished, said industry officials.

The Forest Service is “walking away from the problem instead of fixing it,” said Al Ross of Chico-based Aero Union Corp., the largest of the contractors.

McHale, of the California firefighters group, said he would not blame federal officials for grounding the planes if tests showed that the aircraft were too old and unsafe. But he suggested that government leaders and California residents should now be willing to set aside public funds to pay for newer planes.

“There is no good news associated with the grounding of these aircraft,” he said.

Times staff writer Hugo Martin in Riverside contributed to this report.