Trying to Stay Airborne

Helicopter 18, a multimillion-dollar rescue and firefighting powerhouse, has protected scores of Los Angeles County homes from advancing brush fires, buzzing rooftops to douse a flaming hillside with up to 360 gallons of water. It’s raced heart attack victims to faraway hospitals; it’s landed on freeways to transport injured motorists faster than a wheeled ambulance.

But today, the shell of this Bell 4-12 helicopter sits in an aircraft hangar in Pacoima, its internal chunks of machinery spread out on nearby metal frames for inspection. Cobwebs hang from a set of rotors waiting to be installed.

“That shows you how long it’s been in here,” said Dennis Blumenthal, the county Fire Department’s acting chief of helicopter maintenance, as he swept a finger through a layer of dust.

As the peak of the fire season approaches, the Los Angeles County Fire Department’s fleet of seven helicopters is spending more time on the ground than in the air, beset in part by a shortage of mechanics to keep up with rigorous maintenance requirements. The low wages paid to county mechanics have compounded the problem, making it difficult to recruit for the demanding job.

In addition, replacement parts are in short supply as helicopter manufacturers try to meet the needs of the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Four of the county’s helicopters are old, with engines and rotors that require frequent repairs, sometimes when least expected. Two were built in 1981 and are scheduled for replacement next year at a cost of roughly $7 million each. Two more are 13 years old.

The fleet has had problems for at least four years but has been particularly hard hit in the past three months. From May through July, only one or two of the seven helicopters were available half the time. Two have been grounded since March.

“In a matter of minutes, we could be down to one helicopter, and it frustrates the hell out of everyone,” said Battalion Chief Anthony Marrone, who heads the department’s air operations section.

The county’s fleet of helicopters must cover 2,300 square miles, including large swaths of unincorporated areas and dozens of cities that contract with the county for fire services. Three sheriff’s helicopters also ferry trauma victims in the same area, but only fly in daylight.

The shortage of helicopters is most critical in the Antelope and San Gabriel valleys, where severely injured accident victims must travel long distances to a hospital.

County fire officials said no patients have gone untreated because of their helicopter shortages. If county copters are unavailable, other agencies fill the void, including the Los Angeles City Fire Department and Mercy Air, a private contractor with aircraft bases dotted throughout Southern California.

The city fleet has also responded to brush fires in county terrain. In addition, the county leases two Super Scooper fixed-wing airplanes from Canada from October through December. The planes are capable of dumping 1,600 gallons of water at a time.

But fire officials concede that the county’s level of service is far from ideal. They hope recent steps to raise wages, hire more mechanics and outsource some repairs will improve the situation.

“We’re in business to be ready, and the more helicopters we have up, the better we’re able to serve the public,” said Eric Webber, the Fire Department’s interim chief deputy of business operations. “They have to be ready to go.”

But last week, mechanic Mike Perez knelt in the empty cockpit of Helicopter 18, which has been grounded since March. He fiddled with a thin electrical wire, part of the new siren system he was installing.

If everything went right, it would take 36 hours to complete the tedious work, which entails removing metal panel after panel, threading a wire behind the instrument gauges, through the copter’s nose and out to the speakers.

“It’s so intricate, that if you do a big job and put it back together and it’s all working right, there’s a reward to that,” Perez said. “There’s nothing I like better than watching them on TV at a fire and saying, ‘They’re up on that because of the work I did today fixing that generator.’ ”

Even after the siren is working, it could be weeks or even months before the 13-year-old aircraft is airworthy. It’s long due for a 3,000-hour inspection, and many of its parts need an overhaul.

“On a helicopter, you can’t pull over to the side of the road if something falls off,” Perez said.

The department has three vacancies on its 12-mechanic roster, and a fourth mechanic is out on long-term sick leave. The mechanics scramble to keep up with the relentless demands of some of the most sophisticated aircraft in public safety.

The county’s fleet includes three civilian versions of the Black Hawk helicopter, which the U.S. military flies. Built by Sikorsky, the $17-million Firehawks can remain steady in fierce headwinds -- a crucial advantage during river rescues. They can also carry and drop 1,000 gallons of water at a time, nearly three times the amount carried by one of the department’s Bell 4-12s.

But Firehawks require a startling amount of maintenance. After 30 hours of flying, which a busy Firehawk can reach in a week, the helicopter must be inspected. A team of six mechanics is needed to search the entire machine for cracks, corrosion or frayed wiring. The inspection takes nine hours -- if they find nothing wrong.

After 100 hours of flying, the aircraft needs a new battery. Mechanics will then spend hours looking for flaws, thrusting a fiber-optic scope into the heart of its engine.

At 500 hours of flight, six Sikorsky mechanics, who are not county employees, are brought in to tear the machine apart and put it back together. The helicopter will be grounded four to six weeks.

“You have something like 40,000 pieces moving violently at extreme rates of speed -- things wear,” said Blumenthal, the acting chief mechanic.

The department’s Bell 4-12s are hardly self-sufficient, either. On average, they need about five hours of maintenance for every hour of flight.

County fire helicopters responded to 2,200 emergency medical calls during the 12 months ending in June, fire officials said. Roughly half of those were in eastern portions of the county, where Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena serves as the region’s only trauma center.

La Verne City Councilman Steven Johnson said that while his city has not noticed delays in service, he worries that grounded county helicopters could mean longer waits for local accident and other trauma victims.

“It’s of paramount importance to us that helicopters are available,” Johnson said. “Trauma care in the San Gabriel Valley is dependent on those helicopters.”

On June 8, the county’s fire choppers were unable to help when a 62-year-old man was trampled by a bull in the community of Hi Vista, about five miles south of the Kern County border.

That morning, only one of the fleet’s helicopters was airworthy. And it had been dispatched an hour earlier to rescue a bulldozer driver who had veered over a 200-foot drop in Diamond Bar.

A Mercy Air helicopter out of Victorville picked up the Hi Vista victim in 35 minutes and flew him to Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills.

Fire officials said the episode was the only time an outside agency was called in because of the helicopter shortage, which Battalion Chief Marrone attributed to “luck.”

County fire officials set their own minimum requirement to have at least three helicopters available every day so that trauma and other medical patients in isolated areas of the north, east and western portions of the county can be reached at the same time, if need be. The department failed to meet that goal 26 days in June.

The July onset of fire season raised the minimum requirement to four helicopters. The department fell short of that goal on 18 days. When weather conditions become ripe for wildfires, as they probably will in the next few months, the department aims to have five airworthy helicopters ready -- a goal that makes mechanics roll their eyes.

Marty Martin, a 36-year veteran pilot, said the recent problems led him to consider resigning. Other pilots, he said, have shared his frustration.

“You can have a day when you have only one helicopter and you can feel the tension,” said Martin. When he joined the county two years ago, he said he was taken aback when he scanned the Fire Department’s Barton Heliport, adjacent to Whiteman Airport in Pacoima.

“The first thing I said when I walked in here was, ‘Boy, are we short on mechanics!’ ” Martin said.

Amid a booming market in business jets and helicopters, some public safety agencies are finding it hard to attract mechanics. That will probably worsen, aviation experts said, because fewer students are entering the field, concerned about recent well-publicized layoffs at commercial airlines.

Public safety agencies must also compete with the sweeter salaries offered by private businesses that own aircraft, said Bill O’Brien, who works for the Federal Aviation Administration to educate mechanics on U.S. maintenance policy.

“Let’s put it this way -- you’re the CEO of a Fortune 500 company,” he said. “Are you going to quibble with the wages of a mechanic when you’re sitting in that [aircraft] seat?”

For several years, the county offered mechanics wages that fell well short of even local public safety agencies. Until recently, the county paid an annual salary of $58,488, which is $10,000 less than the Los Angeles City Fire Department offers.

The county’s chief administrative officer, David Janssen, last month gave helicopter mechanics an 11% boost in pay, a rare step reserved for emergency staff shortages. The raise brings their annual salary to $64,928, still less than the city’s but more competitive than before.

Already, fire officials said they were noticing a difference with the addition of a new mechanic and applications from others.

In the meantime, the department is spending money to reduce the maintenance backlog.

On Friday, it sent one of its oldest helicopters to a private maintenance company in Van Nuys for an overhaul and inspection at a cost of at least $132,000.

Fire officials will ask the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to approve a $240,000 contract to use Sikorsky mechanics for inspections and repairs on the county’s Firehawks. That would free up county mechanics to concentrate on the rest of the fleet.

“We’ve been through a tough time,” said Webber, the interim deputy fire chief. “But we believe we’re on the right track.”