Original subtitles

- This program was made possible by Wings Over the Rockies,

educating and inspiring all people

about aviation and space endeavors

of the past, present and the future.

Hi, I'm Shahn Sederberg, and this is "Behind the Wings."

In this episode, we'll take a look at the innovations

in aviation firefighting.

- Only you can prevent forest fires.

- Wildfires have been increasing in frequency, intensity,

and complexity all across the Western United States

and around the world.

When the fire does new things,

firefighting teams have to do new things too.

- Anyone can start a fire and never even know it.

- CAL FIRE in California is one of the largest fire agencies

in the world with more than 60 aircraft and growing.

- But every year, we start forest fires.

- Black Hawk helicopters are converted into Firehawks,

critical data streamed live between aerial and ground crews,

and night vision goggles allow pilots to fight fires

from the sky at night.

It's time to go Behind the Wings.

(upbeat music)

While 2020 was unprecedented,

wildfires had been intensifying for years.

California aviation firefighters provide one

of the best examples of how aviation programs can develop

in response to the increasing fires.

- My name is Stuart Sprung

and I'm the chief of flight operations for CAL FIRE.

So this is the CAL FIRE aviation program.

We are the largest aerial firefighting fleet in the world.

We provide aerial fire protection

for the state of California

and the 40 million citizens that are in it.

Right now, we're at about 60 aircraft

that we staff throughout 22 bases throughout the state.

And the mandate for those aircraft is to quickly respond.

We respond them like we respond fire engines

out of fire stations.

Within five minutes, we try to get in them and out the door.

We respond to those fires in our responsibility area

within 20 minutes and keep 95% of them under 10 acres.

Fire seasons used to be about four months,

and that was accepted

for many, many years in the fire service.

And in the past several years,

it's become more of a year round experience for us.

Our fleet certainly has expanded

because of those increased needs

For anyone flying on an airline over the state can look down

in the forest and see big swaths of dead trees.

And really, those just turn into kindling that just,

if there's a fire or it happens to be something nearby,

they just go up instantly.

So we have a lot of forest with a lot of trees,

but we also have people that reside in those areas,

and have homes and whatnot.

All we can really do is say,

"Okay, the threat has changed.

We have to grow with it and adapt to it."

We're making the biggest jumps we can

with the available equipment.

- My name is Chief Benjamin Berman.

I am the helicopter program manager for CAL FIRE.

There's a definitely a demand signal

for an aviation fleet of this size and expanding

about ready to onboard seven brand new C-130s.

We have 12 CAL FIRE ‘Hawks, S-70i CAL FIRE ‘Hawks.

I think we've gone through unprecedented change

in the last I would say 24 to 36 months

on the rotary wing side.

Going from a type two, we call it, which is the Huey

to a type one, which is the CAL FIRE Hawk.

Multi-engine, multi-system, lots of redundancy,

twice as heavy, twice as large helicopter.

We're definitely seeing more of a challenge,

but I know that CAL FIRE

and our inter-agency partners were definitely stepping up

to that challenge.

95% at 10 acres, those don't typically make the headlines

and that's something that is being done in the background.

- With our aircraft in coordination with the ground crews,

we get it done.

It's that 5% that we can't catch. That's too big for us.

That's when we rely heavily on contract aircraft.

We have hundreds of operators and hundreds and hundreds

of helicopters and airplanes that we have available

to bring in and help us with that.

There is never enough resources. There's never enough data.

There's never enough people to mitigate these

where we'd like to.

Obviously, wouldn't have the season like we did last year

where we burned four million acres

where the worst season before that was two million, right?

So in one year, we doubled what our worst season was before.

Our program is about 50 years old.

And each of those years has provided us with education

of how to improve our program the next and continues to.

- Events today are much more complex

than they ever used to be.

Decisions that we used to have hours or even days

to make sometimes are now having to be made in minutes.

The better information they have,

better decisions they're able to make faster.

We take data from different areas

and different types of sources and information

and pipe it into a super simple firefighter friendly tool.

It is entirely common now especially with the size and scope

of many of the wildfires that we have

in the Western United States.

For any given one of them to have crews coming from dozens

of states in the United States and internationally.

And to be able to make it simple for those crews

to see things is really the heart and soul of what we try

to do at Intterra.

Started doing things with technology and imaging

and being able to see things by our perimeters

and hyperspectral imaging and things we'd never been able

to do before and provide intelligence to the fire service

that we'd never really had.

The big joke that most of them will tell you,

is that there's a hundred years of tradition unimpeded

by progress.

I mean, we literally used to take an airplane up

with a video camera and take pictures of the fire,

and then you'd have to land and go take that video tape in

and do something with it.

And then those pictures, physical pictures would end up

back at the incident command tent, 10, 12,

sometimes, 24 hours later,

but the fire is no longer there.

And so really the intelligence wasn't as good

as it could have been.

We take that data in real-time,

take it right off the aircraft as it's flying

and put it in the hands of the firefighters on the ground.

It's one thing to have a data in a spreadsheet.

It's another thing to be able to understand what the data

on the spreadsheet is telling you.

So that's really what our engineers

and our GIS people are really good at doing.

- My name is Tom Eldar. I'm a software engineer at Intterra.

We take data and we present it

in a much more user friendly way.

So what happens whenever a plane takes off

to go to fight fires, take pictures, things like that?

The moment it takes off, we get notice of it.

We have a mission created on our end.

If they have a live video feed,

they're able to open up the mission and see,

"Oh, hey, here's live feed from the aircraft."

- The firefighting industry has really glommed

on to the technological advancements that have happened

in this field.

With a modernizing field,

a lot of different technologies come into play.

And as soon as you get all

those different technologies working together,

information turns into intelligence.

If a fire chief shows up to a 1,000 acre fire,

draws a polygon,

and he can immediately notify the entire crew on the ground

where the fire is at this point in time.

When we put data on the map,

we have to tell a story and the story has

to help the firefighters make the decisions on the ground

that keep their community safe.

- We have come leaps and bounds in just the last few years

of being able to get information in near real time

or real time into the hands of people

who have to make decisions.

And the reality is that we can do things today

that we couldn't do even just a few years ago.

- The firefighting industry is changing every day.

New technologies provide new opportunities

to both air and ground crews.

Critically, fires don't stop burning at night.

Agencies around the country are experimenting

with night vision technology to enable them to fly at night.

In Colorado, CO Fire Aviation is leading the way

with fixed-wing night vision firefighting.

- Currently,

there's really very little firefighting activity

as when the sun goes down.

Now, sun goes down, we come home.

Get up the next morning,

the sun comes up, we fight the fire.

The fire doesn't quit at night.

Now, we don't have to quit at night

because of the night vision goggle technology.

I first personally started flying with NVGs in 1982

in the army in helicopters.

(helicopter blades whirring)

And now, it has kind of progressed

into the fixed-wing world, crop dusting, for example.

The technology is there. It's been there.

And it continues to refine.

So we've got this highly technical apparatus here.

This is just a standard light fixture,

and we've got a 7 1/2 watt bulb in here.

So we make a little aperture.

And what this does is simulate moonlight conditions.

I'll show you the helmet setup and what we do.

So the helmet has a power source.

I can either power this side or this side

so that gives me redundancy,

essentially self-contained on the helmet.

So the night vision goggle technology,

it goes back several years.

So we're leveraging the equipment.

We're also leveraging the experience that we have.

And now, we're putting that in to the ability

to fight fires at night.

Well, in the evening, in the nighttime,

we have less humidity.

You actually have probably better aircraft performance

'cause it's cooler generally, and you have less wind.

We can take advantage of those situations

by flying at night having continuous coverage on the fire.

We're on the fourth year of actually starting to do this.

So we initiated.

In 2017, it was actually

with the Oregon Department of Forestry.

"We would like to look into this.

We know the technology's out there,

we'd like to look into this.

Would you be interested, CO Fire?"

And CO Fire said, "Yeah."

We modified one of the airplanes 'cause the cockpit needs

to be modified to NVG compatibility.

And so that's where we started in 2017, taking a look,

putting a pilot in the airplane, flying it around,

Can we do this?

Can we safely drop retardant at night?

Yes.

Can we do it effectively?

Yes.

We are the first

that is applying night vision goggle technology

and fixed-wing operations in night, aerial firefighting,

specifically the single engine air tankers.

I'm looking through the goggles,

but you can see I'm looking underneath.

So the design of them,

I'm looking underneath at the instrument panel,

but outside, I'm looking through the goggles.

And it's very important for the cockpit

to be what we call NVG compatible.

So they're not having an influence on the goggles.

That's why you see a lot, that's there in the green light,

because that is a spectrum of light

that don't affect the goggles.

And so they magnify the light.

- For those of you that I haven't met, I'm Zachery Sullivan.

I work for CO Fire. I'm one of the pilots.

I'm not one of the night vision pilots

so that's why I'm out here on the ground.

So we run nine airplanes.

One in Oregon. It's the only fixed-wing aircraft out there

on a night contract.

We did it last year and they're gonna stand it up again

this year.

That kind is the brainchild behind it.

Basically what we want to do is invite everyone out,

see what we're doing with it.

First thing is I'd love any of your guys' feedback like,

"Sullivan, this just don't work."

Or, "Sullivan, clean this up."

Or, "This is a good idea."

So we know how to improve our program.

And hopefully someday, we'll start to see

this technology put to use throughout either this state

or neighboring states.

We think it's coming.

So we just wanna make sure we have the best way

of doing it out there.

So the first airplane's taken off at 8:40

so that gives us about 20 minutes to get out there.

The first drop will probably be coming in at 8:50.

So we'll have a little bit of daylight.

And then the rest all be at dark

It's a brand new concept.

Literally, the first place it's ever been done is

in California with a couple of county agency helicopters.

And that's been going on for about three years consistently.

We stood up the airplane in Oregon last year

for the first time.

And we're the first fixed-wing operator to ever do that.

So it's brand new technology being implemented.

And these things take time.

It's kind of, we've taken the philosophy

of a crawl, walk, run type of thing.

And it just, implementation,

you wanna make sure it's done the right way.

It's different because our target altitude is 60 to 80 feet

from the fuel source.

So again, that's not like a 747,

that's flying at 30,000 feet, a little bit closer, so.

(aircraft engine revving)

There's always limitations.

We can't just go out and fly through every amount of smoke

in every situation.

But it does give us again, another advantage

that we don't always have during the daytime.

Then another misconception is,

"Well, can you see power lines, cell towers,

all these things out there that could cause an accident?"

You can see them better at night than you can

during the day.

It just, everything is so much better to see at night.

So you've got a home, the fire's coming towards it.

It's 8:52 PM, which we have to be on the ground.

With this technology, we can go a couple hours past that

and go out and we can paint those houses.

So maybe that will help save those houses

where otherwise, we can't fly.

There's no chance, right?

We're seeing things that we've never seen before.

Well, that's why we brought this out is it's time.

The fire's gonna do things we are not used to,

it's time to bring in ways to attack that fire

that we're not used to.

And this is one of those things.

- While CO Fire is leading the way

with fixed-wing night vision Goggle firefighting,

helicopters are also an incredibly versatile tool

in the aviation firefighting toolkit.

Based on the famous Sikorsky Black Hawk,

the Firehawk helicopter is modified to be one

of the most capable firefighting aircraft available today.

(keyboard clacking)

- My name is Eric Lama.

I'm the Firehawk program manager here at United Rotorcraft.

I'm in charge of all the current

and future ongoing Firehawk programs

that we have here at the facility.

(helicopter blades whirring)

The Firehawk is a multi-mission helicopter.

It has the capability of dropping and inserting firefighters

either at the front line or even at a firebreak

where they're dropping people off to go through

and actually start to prepare the firebreak.

So what the Firehawk will do for the most part

is they will transport the firemen

and all their equipment out, drop them off,

and then the aircraft will lift off and then go out

and actually start taking on water

and then coming back and then work in conjunction

with the firefighters on the ground

either to suppress the fire that's there

or support them just in case something were to pop up

or the firefighters needed to be removed

from the area quickly.

(siren wailing)

- Just watching what our customers able to do with this.

We have San Diego fire, LA County Fire

who really helped drive the design of this,

now CAL FIRE, Colorado,

I mean, we're just really excited

to see this platform entering into the market

and doing what it's doing.

LA County realized that the Huey just could not keep up pace

with the increasing fires with the fire intensity.

But the technology just has advanced so much

from the 1950s.

And it was during those early designs,

we're sketching designs on the back of a napkin.

And Denton says, "My son's got this monster truck.

And if we took that design of a monster truck

and we jacked up the struts like that,

we can do the same with the Black Hawk ”.

That napkin and that monster truck idea is

what drove the design of a Firehawk.

- The aircraft has a thousand gallon water tank on it.

And what that thousand gallon water tank brings

is it allows the pilot or the crew to actually meter

that water out of the tank itself.

It can take on a minimum of 200 all the way up

to the thousand gallons and then actually use that

and spread that out to help spread a fire line.

- So this is the thousand gallon water tank.

This is obviously mounted under the belly of the aircraft.

This is the snorkel, 10 foot extendable

and retractable snorkel here.

The steps on the right-hand side of the aircraft

for the crew to get in and out of the air frame.

I can't think of a better testament

than giving the Black Hawk to a group of 18, 19, 21 year old

that are in the military,

and allowing them to basically go out

and just use that aircraft and abuse that aircraft.

And it comes back everyday wanting more.

It's on the ramp. It's ready to go the next morning.

It's able to withstand a multitude of,

I don't wanna say abuse, but tough wear.

Some of the other operators have commercial aircraft.

They're not built as robust as what the Black Hawk is.

That's what gives this Firehawk the capability to be able

to go out there and land in rugged areas

and to be able to do the mission that it does today.

So we have a multitude of different customers aircraft

in the hangar, and they do customize some

of the different things, different radios,

different things,

a lot different equipment that they use specifically

in their counties or their fire departments

to help them communicate with their individual bases

or the local police departments there.

But the main thing for the Firehawk

is obviously the high gear, right?

We take the main landing gear off of the aircraft.

We jack the aircraft up.

We basically put a 20-inch extension there

with the torque box, allowing the aircraft to be jacked up

to be able to handle that thousand gallon water tank.

And what the tank has is it has a 10 foot snorkel

that's extended and retracted from the cockpit to allow them

to fill that tank.

The pump will actually suck 1,000 gallons of water

into that tank in under a minute.

They get the water as close as they can to those fires

so that they don't have to make a bunch

of trips back and forth.

The tank itself has a 45 gallon foam tank mounted

to the back of it.

That's also controlled via the cockpit,

allowing the pilots to inject a firefighting foam.

Coming from Sikorsky,

it has the the stroke attenuating seats for the crew

to allow for crash impacts

so that the seats will absorb the impact.

We've gotten it down to a point where we can paint

that aircraft and have it completely modified

in eight months.

The longer they sit here, they're not out fighting fires.

They're not dropping firefighters into the hills.

They're not out dropping water.

- 50% of all fires can be eliminated

if they're put out within the first 20 to 30 minutes

before they have a chance to grow into this big fire.

And if you talk to LA County,

they're gonna say the Black Hawk basically,

that is the only aircraft will that give you

that performance capability and allow you to fly in areas

that no other helicopters can.

- Helicopters like the Firehawk

are undoubtedly valuable tools

for aviation firefighting teams.

But how do helicopters fly?

Next, we'll hear from Camille Calibeo to find out exactly

how helicopters take to the skies.

- How do helicopters fly?

Helicopters are very versatile aircraft.

They can take off and land vertically

and they can hover,

making them ideal for a variety of missions

including firefighting and search and rescue.

But how do they work?

Helicopter stay on the air, thanks to their rotor blades,

which works similarly to airplane wings.

Both forms of aircraft generate lift when large amounts

of air move over the wings or rotor blades very fast.

When airplanes fly through the air,

the air travels around the wing to produce lift.

When helicopters fly the air travels

around the quickly spinning rotor blades to produce lift.

When rotor blades are spinning very fast,

the body of the helicopter wants to spin

in the opposite direction because of Newton's third law.

To counteract this, most helicopters use another set

of blades mounted sideways on the tail called a tail rotor.

The tail rotor pushes the tail in the opposite direction

of the torque induced by the main rotor.

So the helicopter can fly in a straight line

or maintain a stable hover.

Lastly, helicopters control their movement

by changing the angle and or speed of the rotors.

Helicopters' ability to navigate at slow speeds

and even hover make them a critical piece

of the aviation firefighting toolkit.

- Wow. The technology used

in aviation firefighting is super impressive,

but it does come with a cost.

As states and agencies consider greater investments

in aviation firefighting,

it's important to look at both the costs and the benefits.

- The cost that's associated with for instance,

DFPC's Firehawk, the S-70i that they're gonna buy.

You look at the initial cost.

Once it's all said and done outfitted there,

they're paying $24 million plus

just to get that aircraft out the door,

equipped and ready to go.

Then you start looking at maintenance.

Are they hiring within? Or they gonna do,

you look at CAL FIRE, they hired within.

But it's a multi-billion dollar operation a year

for maintenance.

You're looking at a rotor aircraft,

you have a million plus parts that are trying

to get away from itself.

Helicopters are probably the most maintenance intensive part

of what we do, firefighting versus our fixed-wing.

- As we go through that life cycle

of an aircraft acquisition,

there's definitely lessons that we learn almost

on a daily basis.

We're utilizing infrared. We're utilizing real-time mapping.

We're utilizing a lot of these different technologies

to help us with better understanding

of what tools to employ.

- We have an acronym when we talk about SEE.

It's gotta be safe, effective, and efficient.

In this aircraft, fits all of those requirements.

It's safe 'cause it's got two engines.

It's effective if we use it right, as the right tool.

And we're learning that. We take all that information.

We mold it to our model that CAL FIRE uses.

What other states might use from Washington

to Arizona or Colorado,

I'm sure there'll be looking at us, watching us what we do.

And they're like, "Oh."

That's probably a model that we may set up for them

to follow in our footsteps.

- At the end of the day, we had to make our own evaluation

and look at what was going on out there.

Everyone was like, "These are game changers.

They make a huge difference. And put out just one,

and suddenly the Firehawk is well worth every penny."

Colorado is in a place, now is the moment,

we need to make these investments so that we are ready

and we can protect Colorado's future.

- Really excited about the progress Colorado is gonna make.

Thanks to the bill we signed today

and our legislators who are here today

in being able to fight forest fires

and hit them hard early.

- We had the conversation,

"Is it worth the $24 million investment

to bring a Firehawk to this state?"

And I think we were convinced by the evidence we see

in California.

And I wouldn't be surprised if at some point

in the next few years,

we're purchasing another Firehawk

because we see such a dramatic improvement

in our ability to respond early to wildfires.

- Obviously from the fire season that we had last year,

that brought a lot of attention to the Firehawk

and to other firefighting apparatus capabilities

within the state.

And I mean, what we had two of the largest forest fires

in Colorado history last year.

Had it not been as bad as it was that last year,

it may not have gone through as quickly.

Shows that the legislators of Colorado are dedicated

to its citizens.

The future is kind of unlimited.

I mean, it's kind of the old saying,

"If you can dream it, it can be done."

- Reducing CO2 emissions

and greenhouse gas emissions is something

that needs to happen.

There is hope. This is not inevitable.

When you can literally see some of the effect

in the sky, it has an impact.

But I think a lot of us are also, in this field are hopeful

because we know that it is possible

to change this trajectory.

- Lightning is still going to strike in unknown places,

but I think the effectiveness of what we're learning here

and what we're doing can be measured.

So five years from now,

we have some data that says,

"Look what we've done. Look how many lives we've saved.

Look how many structures we've saved.

Look how many fires we got put out in the first 24 hours

before they spread."

- Firefighting is not going away.

But how we do it and how effectively we do it

and how safely we're able to do it is going to continue

to change.

- Wildfires won't stop burning.

And aviation teams are pushing forward

with new techniques to face the challenge.

Today's aircraft are capable of delivering heavier loads

at faster speeds with even more informed strategy.

All of these tools will play a role in the next chapter,

aviation firefighting.

(upbeat music)