by Marc Mullis
marc@agairupdate.com
For those of you who indulge in winter snow sports, I am sure you have either been, or wish you had been, to Sun Valley, Idaho. This premier resort community is nestled in the awesome Sawtooth Mountains of the south-central part of the state. The town of Ketchum is the focal point of the Valley. Not only is it a winter wonderland, but it also attracts a jet-set crowd of part time residents during the summer months. Numerous Hollywood movie stars and other high profile individuals have vacation homes in the picturesque valley. The beautiful scenery and remoteness of the area attracts visitors year around. Ketchum is a small town, yet it’s property is valued at over twelve billion dollars. Needless to say, it is a very pricey place to visit.
During the dog days of August, I was flying fires out of Twin Falls, Idaho with Tanker 409. This clean and tidy little town got its claim to fame when Evil Knievel launched his motorcycle over the Snake River Canyon several decades ago. During the months of June and July, I had been bounced from one tanker base to the next. About the time my service truck would catch up to me I would get a dispatch to a fire in another state. All the travel was starting to wear on my driver and me. We were ready to stay put for a while. When we arrived in Twin Falls we were assured we were not going anywhere else. Even though there were already three AT-802s there and one based sixty miles north in Hailey, the base manager told me that they had been very busy and needed another tanker.
His statement turned out to be correct. We flew on fires daily. Dry lighting started many of the fires. About once a week a storm system would come through that contained little moisture but lots of electricity. Fires would often times start as soon as a lightning strike occurred, but some strikes produced “sleepers”. A sleeper is a strike that will smolder with no flames for several days until the right combination of wind and humidity will cause it to take off. Sleepers usually kept us busy, until the next system came through and a new cycle started.
Some of the fires grew very quickly and required other tankers to be called in for help. Aircraft out of Pocatello and Mountain Home, Idaho, as well as Utah and Nevada were often working on our fires. A couple of these blazes had up to eleven SEATs working on them. I had never seen more than five SEATs working one fire. This type of complexity requires professionalism and coordination among the flight crews. It was a pleasure working with them.
The tenth of August started out as another typical day. The flight crews trickled into the tanker base, completed pre-flights and were ready for duty at 0900. The daily briefing was the first order of the day. It had changed very little since I had arrived in Twin Falls. It was going to be hot and windy with single digit humidity. The Haines Index (a measure of the potential for a fire to grow large in a short period of time) was a five, which is very high. The highest value is six, so any new start would have to be dealt with quickly. We were told that there were already several fires in our coverage area and that we should expect a dispatch soon. The pilots donned their Nomex flight suits and leather boots and waited on the beep of the fax machine to signal that a dispatch was incoming.
The wait was a short one. Soon, all four of the Twin Falls tankers, as well as the one from Hailey, were on their way to a fire on the north side of the Snake River Plains. The fuels in these plains were relatively light, being made up of grass and sagebrush making them relatively easy to contain. The heavier fuels in the higher elevations were a whole different ball game. The wind was blowing the fire into some rocky outcroppings, which helped us make some progress. I was headed back to the fire with my third load of retardant when I got a call on the radio from South Idaho Dispatch. A new smoke had been spotted. My tanker was being diverted to check it out. As I jotted down the divert information on my kneeboard, I thought to myself that another sleeper had awakened.
Once I had re-programmed the new radio frequencies into the FM radio, I entered the latitude/longitude coordinates into the GPS. When the moving map popped up, it showed the new start to be in a very rugged section of the Sawtooth Mountains. We had been briefed that the heavy fuels in the mountains had dried out in the past few days and any fire that got away from us would be very difficult to contain.
When I arrived on the scene, it took me several minutes to find the smoke. I was flying at an altitude of 8,500 feet MSL in order to clear the mountain peaks. The wisp of smoke was coming from thousands of feet below at the very bottom of a steep, narrow canyon. This was not going to be the best place to fight a fire!
I knew that my load of retardant would be very important. The fire was small now, and with a little luck, I could stop it where it was. As I maneuvered T-409 into the canyon to make the drop, turbulence hit me like a sledge-hammer. The lower I got the more violent it got. At this point, I became more worried about getting out of the canyon than making an accurate drop. After I hit the release trigger I looked back to see the red cloud of retardant being blown way off target. This was not going to be doable.
After I had climbed back up into smooth air, I contacted dispatch and gave them a size-up of the fire. Relaying the fire info to them, I suggested that no more aircraft be dispatched here until conditions improved. They agreed and said they had a hand crew hiking in. We would try it again when the winds calmed down, which didn’t happen until after nightfall. It would be called the Castle Rock fire.
The following morning during briefing we were told that the Castle Rock fire had blown up over night and made a run up and out of the canyon. In a matter of hours, it had become the top priority fire in the eastern Great Basin. If it crossed the ridge-top, the prevailing westerly winds would carry it toward the town of Ketchum, only eight miles away. All available aircraft, both fixed and rotary-wing, would be assigned to try and stop what had turned into a raging monster. All ground crews had been pulled to safety zones. It would be up to the air-crews to get to control the fire.
The next few days turned into a blur of activity, as sortie after sortie was flown out of the Twin Falls Tanker Base. There was a point when thirty-five aircraft were assigned to the fire. Airspace was assigned to separate SEATs, heavy air-tankers and helicopters. Each class of aircraft was given an initial fix to arrive at the fire and await instructions on where to drop their load. We would make progress only to see a wind shift wipe out our retardant lines. Time after time we would have to start all over again. The fire was slowly but surely eating its way toward Ketchum. By the second week an evacuation was ordered for the town. The SEATs and helicopters were dropping near empty houses and streets in the downtown area, while the heavy air-tankers worked the ridges.
Mount Baldy is a 10,000-foot peak that overlooks the valley and provides the ski-slopes that have made it famous. When the fire started up the back side of the mountain, the decision was made to turn the snow making machines on. This move, along with a massive assault from the air on the mountain top were a last ditch effort to save the resort. Everyone had their fingers crossed, hoping the tactic would work. When the flames reached the top, the lines held and the flames shrunk to a manageable size.
Even though the town was saved and the people returned, the fire was far from being out. Finally, in early September, Mother Nature did what millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours could not. She sent the rain that put out the fire.