En route to a S.E.A.T. initial fire attack in Oklahoma as viewed from cockpit of an AT-802, Marc Mullis pilot.

Without contaminating the river, blue gel is dropped by Tanker 459 on Canadian River Fire.

Winter firestorm on the southern plains

by Marc Mullis

Frost and ice are things aerial firefighters do not usually have to deal with. These factors have become the norm for this year’s unique winter fire season that swept across the southern plains of Oklahoma and Texas. The last edition of AirFire & Forestry covered the beginning of this event that has burned well over a million acres, destroyed hundreds of homes and affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of residents in these two states. There was a rocky start to the effort getting aerial resources in place and develop a coordinated attack plan. This part of the country was not prepared for an aerial assault of this magnitude and experienced team members were simply not in place at the beginning of the firestorm. This resulted in much confusion and less than perfect use of the resources on hand.

As the abbreviated days of January clicked by, a firefighting plan started to come together. A proper communications system was one of the biggest goals. As key people with the required skills began to come on the scene, the communications glitch, along with many others, were fixed to the point that the overall system was eventually running like the proverbial “well-oiled machine”.

Three months later, the fires are still burning and aerial firefighters are still on duty, flying missions daily. No change in the weather pattern is in the foreseeable future so all crews are prepared to stay until the drab, brown countryside changes color during the spring green-up. The team that is in place now is as good as it gets and the Herculean effort to assemble new members will go down in the history of aerial firefighting.

There are three major weather patterns that seem to dominate Texas and Oklahoma during the months of winter and spring; windy, windier and gale force winds. January 18th fell into the windier category. It was very windy and warm. Red Flag warnings were posted and everyone expected it to be a busy Tuesday. Oklahoma is a big state. Reload bases had been set up in all reaches to insure that no one area was unprotected. With only six AT-802As in place to cover this vast area, flight crews threw their bags in the aircraft every morning. They never knew where “pumpkin time” (all aircraft must be on the ground somewhere at thirty minutes past sundown) would find them. The first dispatch came in around 1300. Once the latitude-longitude was plugged into the GPS, the fire was about sixty miles to the southwest.

Our dispatch center is located in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Because of the distance involved, a repeater has been set up in central Oklahoma. We actually talked to a relay center, which was recently put into service in Shawnee, Oklahoma.

As soon as I was airborne and tuned the radios, I sensed a certain amount of confusion over the airwaves. Both the air to air and the flight-following frequencies were congested. I was having difficulty making contact. Finally, I made contact with my assigned Air Tactical Group Supervisor (ATGS). He informed me that my lat-long was probably wrong, but asked me to proceed anyway, since I would be arriving before him.

A few minutes later the ATGS called and requested that I report any smoke in sight. I replied that I had several smokes in view, but one was right on my nose and it appeared to be the proper distance. Meanwhile, the congestion was getting worse and the confusion had become very contagious. It became evident that several fires had been assigned the same radio frequencies and several aircraft were unsure to which fire to go.

Upon arriving at my lat-long, I observed there was definitely a fire in progress and the numerous firefighters on the ground seemed to have it under control. When the ATGS arrived, his numerous attempts to contact them failed. We concurred that due to the lack of communications and the apparent containment of the fire that my load of fire suppressant would be more useful on another fire. After circling for nearly an hour, I was finally handed off to another fire about thirty miles away.

En route to the second fire, the congestion on the radios worsened. The fire was only five miles from the Ardmore Airport, where there is both a control tower and a heavy air tanker base. I arrived at the fire just as a lead plane and a heavy tanker out of Ardmore were coming on the scene. A media helicopter on the scene came up on our frequency and informed us that several homes had burned and that many more were being threatened. Houses were burning at the rate of one every two minutes. Once again the lead plane could not establish communications with any firefighters on the ground. We felt helpless as we watched home after home go up in flames. The confusion on the radios had reached a crescendo.

Finally, the lead plane told us to start dropping our loads to try and save some structures. The heavy went in first, dropping his load right in a back yard. I did the same and was followed by another SEAT that had joined us. Load, dump and return to Ardmore was the order. With four heavies and two SEATs on a short turnaround, it did not take long to see progress being made. The take-off clearance from the tower was short and sweet, “Tanker-XYZ, cleared for take-off runway one-two, left turn direct to fire, frequency change to tactical approved”.

Soon, a few of the aircraft were being diverted to other fires. The confusion that had ruled the day remained. Despite the difficulties, most of the drops that were made that day were both accurate and effective. The thing that made it work that day was the professionalism exhibited by the flight crews. All of the training required to be a part of an aerial firefighting team really paid off. Somehow, all the crews made it into their assigned bases before “pumpkin time” that evening. During the night mission de-briefs, the most common question was, “What in the world happened out there today?”

At the next morning’s briefing, word was received there was to be an immediate stand-down of all aviation resources. Several hours were going to be needed to sort through what had gone wrong on the day that would now be referred to as “Black Tuesday”. No aircraft would be launched in Texas or Oklahoma until the communications problems were identified and solved. A conference call was scheduled for 0930 in the Incident Command Post located on the Shawnee Airport. Each of the fourteen tanker bases involved would be included in the call, as well as dispatchers and Incident Commanders.

Being based at Shawnee, I was fortunate to be able to sit in during the meeting. The major problems soon became evident. First and foremost was the fact that not enough frequencies were available for dispatch to assign when multiple incidents were involved. Second, proper protocol was not being followed when giving a name to a fire before aircraft were sent to it. Several aircraft had gone to different lat-longs and the same name was used for different fires. And third, many of the ground crews had radio equipment that was incapable of being programmed to the air-to-ground frequencies assigned by dispatch. Several minor problems were identified, but these three had caused the breakdowns on Black Tuesday. Things had worked pretty well, until the tremendous number of fires of the day overwhelmed the system.

After the problems were identified, fixes were decided upon and key personnel were appointed to make sure things happened fast. We were in the middle of a winter firestorm and any delays could result in the loss of life or property. At 1300 the stand-down was cancelled and all aircrews were assigned back to alert status with assurances that all remedies would be in place by 0800 the next morning.

A lot of things happened that afternoon. Additional frequencies were requested and received from the National Dispatch Center in Boise, Idaho. Cases of programmable walkie-talkies were flown in to be distributed to ground crews. Frequency sectors were assigned with maps showing their geographic boundaries. Incident Commanders were briefed on the importance of quickly assigning a name to a fire.

The following weeks proved the results of such a concerted effort. Most all missions went without a hitch. The firestorms continue despite recent precipitation. A couple of hours of sun and wind are all that is needed to dry these type fuels. Today, the fires here in the plains have not made the newscasts, as they did a couple of months ago. They are caught and contained before growing to monster size. The air and ground crews have a battle plan and you can rest assured there should never again be a Black Tuesday.