“Sorry about the webcam being off, I’m devastated.”
Thus begins the interview that Monique gives me. It is not his real name but his real name cannot be revealed, at least for today. We have been friends for twenty years and have flown together for fun in the US and Europe. He is among the pilots of the firefighting crews that are operating between Los Angeles, Santa Monica and Hollywood. In the last few hours the weather conditions have been critical: the strong wind, almost one hundred kilometers an hour, causes the flames to advance so rapidly that they reach the speed of the helicopters, making it impossible to precisely release the water and retardant. And even for airplane pilots it is very complicated to operate. “They release before crossing the flames or blindly and we do the same with the airplanes, also because we don’t see the target, or rather it is so vast that we don’t understand where the hotbed is.”
She, 45 years old, is the commander of a civil twin-reactor from the 1980s transformed into a water bomber, capable of releasing four tons of liquid at a time which, however, she admits, “this time they don’t even seem to reach the ground (sighs), we have never risked so much, we are almost always beyond our operational limits and close to those of airplanes. The smell that comes into the cabin creates nausea and we often use the oxygen mask.” She, like the pilots of the crews arriving from Quebec and British Columbia, has to deal with very intense winds that generate very strong turbulence, so keeping the airplane on the right path becomes a real battle.
Monique quotes her Canadian colleague Pascal Duclos, chief pilot of the Quebec government air service, who told CTV News that he spent several hours in the air Tuesday, dropping dozens of loads of water on fire-ravaged areas: “He said the truth, I too saw houses and cars on fire, people wetting the roofs, trying to save the building, many people on the ground, firefighters trying to find a path to reach them.” Monique has been flying as a firefighting pilot for 14 years but admits: “I have never seen a situation like this, we don’t have time to go back to base to refuel, today I was supposed to fly two three-hour shifts but I could only do one. The wind came extremely quickly and this is really unusual,” he explains, “the fire broke out quickly and spread as if it were being pushed by a giant flamethrower, we couldn’t fly for the other three hours, we had to wait that the intensity dropped below 30 miles per hour (55 km/h) before we could bring the airplane to the front of the fire.” I ask you, in addition to your old MD-87, the ex-military C-130s and the Canadair CL-415s, what vehicles they are using. “Every type of transformed airplane or helicopter is needed today, there are the decommissioned Army Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopters with 3,000 gallon (11,300 liter) tanks, the Sikorsky S-76, up to the small Airbus Ecureuil with the tanks attached under the cabin. Under normal conditions they would be invaluable because they are capable of precise and widespread interventions, but in these conditions they take unnecessary risks. Hundreds of houses have now been destroyed.”
What evolution do you foresee in the next few hours? “If the wind dies down we can regain control of the fires in a short time, without us there is also no protection for the fire brigade teams on the ground.”
The help of the Canadians is therefore essential for you… “The CL-415 teams are sent to California in September as part of an annual contract in force since 1994 which lasts three to six months, and many crews are the same as previous years, this is an advantage because they know the orography of the area and have been able to develop the release techniques. Others of them are very young and have to fly together with experienced commanders in order to understand how to operate and demonstrate that they know how to do it. But no one would want to learn something in the most complicated conditions and risk their lives with every release.”
Where did you fly today? “I was in the Hurst County sector, northeast of Los Angeles, which burned for 37% of its area from July to today. Over approximately 40 square kilometers have been charred and unfortunately there are other victims.”
It’s 11am in California, what will you do today? “Until the sun starts to go down, around 4pm, the wind is not expected to drop. Now I’ll eat something and then I’ll join my colleagues in the briefing room, we’ll decide how to refuel the plane, what quantity of water and retardant. From that moment I am ready to leave.”
