Oregon fields to California skies, a brief look at helicopter firefighting with a local pilot
By Garrett Christensen on Thursday, August 29th, 2024 in More Top Stories Northeastern Oregon News
UNION COUNTY – The sheer manpower requirements and logistical complexity that goes into wildland firefighting cannot be understated. From firefighters on the ground holding humble hand tools, to pilots at the controls of multi-engine air tankers, containing and putting out fires potentially hundreds of thousands of acres in size is no easy task. In rural and remote areas especially, air support often plays a crucial role. For those that may be curious as to what aerial firefighting looks like on the day to day, Elkhorn Media Group recently spoke to a local helicopter pilot currently assisting with fires in California.
Grant Slater (23), a Union County native and graduate of Imbler High School, is currently working his first year as part of a small company known as Brothers Air Support, itself also in its first year of operation. The Co-pilot for a UH-60 Blackhawk outfitted for firefighting operations, Slater is currently based near Sacramento California, assisting Cal Fire (California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection) with various small fires in the region as well as the larger Park Fire. When asked what a typical Fire call looks like, Slater gave the following rundown:
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“They’re like, ‘hey, we need some helicopters to help with that.’ So, they’ll put it in an order, and we’ll get called from somewhere higher up. We show up and we have what’s called a manager with Cal Fire, somebody that actually works for Cal Fire that’s in charge of us. We’ll do an inspection of everything, make sure we’re all good to go.
Once we’re assigned to a fire, we’re kind of waiting at what they call a helibase. Once they do need us, they’ll give us a call on their radio usually, or our manager will call us, then we’ll get in the helicopter and get it started up. We’ll contact the helibase, and we’re ready to go fly. They’ll say, ‘you’re good to go’ and we’ll take off. Usually there’s somebody in the area, they’ll call them a helco, which is like a helicopter flying around with somebody that works for Cal Fire in charge of all the different air resources, because we’re working with tankers and working with a bunch of other helicopters.
For these bigger incidents, they’ll guide us to more specifically what they want us to do. They’ll give us a dip site, usually a designated pond or some other body of water that’s accessible to us with our bucket that we’ll dip out of. Then they’ll give us either a mission or just kind of say, ‘Hey, in this area, there’s quite a bit of activity on the fire. Can you just use your best judgment as a pilot in the air to put it out?’
Usually there’s no ground resources in that area, or sometimes if there are ground resources in a specific area, they get us in contact with them. We’ll talk to them on a different frequency, and they’ll guide us in where they want us to put the water at. And then we’ll repeat that for a fuel cycle, which is about two, two and a half hours and then go fuel up. And if they want us to come back, we’ll do it again.”
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Slater further elaborated that, while generally given designated dip sites and usually guided in by Cal Fire or ground teams to the initial drop, pilots are given some degree of freedom in carrying out their missions:
“On the Park Fire, we would need to protect this lookout site that has a repeater on it, that was our mission. So, just however we felt like we needed to do that. There’s a little bit of freedom in that.”
Slater admitted that, based on his previous experience of firefighting on the ground and coordinating with helicopters, he was somewhat surprised at the amount of freedom given to pilots during the firefighting. Another shock was the sheer volume of air traffic present during some of the operations, explaining:
“It’s pretty crazy how many aircraft they can call in. Some of these helibases you’re at, there’s something like 40 helicopters and it’s pretty impressive how they can manage all of that.”
As a co-pilot, Slater is given the opportunity to fly the helicopter on ferry flights (transiting from one area to another) but hands over controls to the pilot during firefighting operations. When not flying, his duties include managing the radio, keeping track of how many buckets have been pulled from a dip site, and watching fuel usage.
As to how he ended up working on firefighting operations, Slater explained that, when finishing up flight school, he was put in contact with the company via his flight instructor as it was starting up. He was initially only meant to help them out for around a week but was asked to come back. The other reason is related to his previous experience on the ground. As explained by Slater himself:
“Having been a firefighter for a few years previously on the ground and seeing them drop buckets, that’s one of the things that got me interested in becoming a helicopter pilot anyways. So, it was a cool opportunity to be able to actually see it from the pilot’s perspective.”
