Aircraft Use

 

Within Pennsylvania, we use two different types of aircraft for fire suppression, and they are both very different animals. What we have sitting at the tanker bases are Single Engine Air Tankers (SEATs) and at remote helipads, we have three Helicopters (one is a Type 2, which can support larger missions and two are Type 3). While there is no specific, hard set time to use either aircraft over another, we do have some differences between the two for different objectives in a mission. Either can be used in situations when the fire is threatening structures and to help suppress the fire’s spread.

SEATs are used to drop retardant onto the fire to buy the resources time. They can also give the resources feedback as to what the fire is doing because they have a pretty good bird’s eye view. Tankers can drop 800 gallons of retardant at a time. They can drop more than Helicopters but must return to the base to get more retardant (usually we can get them turned around quick).

The other useful thing that air tankers can do is change the level of their drop, and split loads. There are four levels that the gate can open: Level 1 is for grass and light fuels, the gate doesn’t open far; level 2, then level 3, and level 4 is wide open for heavy timber/fuels. Splitting loads means that they close the gate when about half of the retardant is left in the hopper. This can be used to your advantage to hit different spots on the fire.

Helicopters are useful to combat hot-spotting, reconnoiter the fire, walk resources into a fire that they can’t find, or help them map the fire. They can also maneuver in areas that tankers cannot. The Type 3s can drop 90 gallons of water at a time, while the Type 2s can drop 350 gallons at a time and can load from a water source closer to the incident than an airport.