Aviation in general is a dangerous occupation absolutely.
But just the heavy load that these aircraft have on them.
When you get a fire that's creating its own storm and particularly when these
mega wildland fires, they can't see.
It's a dangerous job out there.
Straight to the latest on those devastating wildfires out west.
How dangerous is Wildland Firefighting?
Lace up your boots. Get your hard hat on.
Throw your pack on and run into the woods while it's burning.
What we do from the air is very dangerous.
I've seen a fire go from
two acres
to 300 acres
in 10 minutes.
It's consuming so much fuel.
That.
Trees are blowing up
in front of it from the heat.
A lot of times we're not going to be able to put the fire out.
All we're doing is helping the people on the ground.
Fighting fire from the air.
It's a critical component in wildland fire.
They're helping the guys on the ground for sure.
You know the eyes in the sky keeping the firefighters safe.
Whether it's the air attack.
Or the helicopter that comes on scene.
Or the jump plane.
There also.
The rapid response is critical to try
to catch these fires when they're small.
When we're actually doing the drop
we are descending down just like
you're going to land basically.
To only 60 feet above the canopy
and you're going one hundred and forty miles an hour.
Andy Taylor he owns a
single engine air tanker company.
That's all one big
tank where the retardant goes.
These doors right.
here are the full length of this gate.
There's two of them that open up this way.
Because you're releasing in about five thousand pounds instantaneously.
You're going to have to be put in a little bit of forward
stick in to counteract the load
coming out of the airplane.
Either that or the airplane is going to pitch straight up.
Where their best used as an initial attack.
So when a fire first starts.
The order will come down through that local dispatch center.
Time is 12:13
and we're coming out of the pit
with seven hundred and twenty five gallons.
The faster he can get on scene the smaller
that fire is going to be before it has a chance
to pick up a head of steam
and get away from us.
Estimated time in route is eleven minutes.
You're always expecting the unknown.
You don't know where it's at.
You're gonna get along to tell
you the location of the fire.
There's a possibility once in a while you might
even get the luxury of having
the elevation of the fire
because there's somebody on the ground already.
But we don't know what we're getting ouself into.
We don't know what the winds
are going to be like
and how that's going to affect turbulence.
And we don't know any of the environmental
conditions are going to be over the fire until
we actually get there.
That's why we've had.
People being in the wrong spot
at the wrong time.
And we've had fatalities.
When an injury
or fatality happens on a big event there.
Everybody's ears are out there they
know what's going on.
They hear the radio traffic.
There was a close friend of mine that was
involved in an accident.
And I found out how WFF participated and all the help.
To him
and his family.
And that struck me deeply
and I thought they did one heck of a job.
Wildland Firefighter Foundation's main mission
is to help the families of fallen
and injured Wildland Firefighters.
Few years ago.
The statistics in wildland fatality
aviation was 52 percent of that.
These are all the aviation that's gone down.
And these lives aren't lost because
of shoddy firefighting.
The loss of this life is
dealing with Mother Nature.
Obviously being a non-profit we're up against funding all the time
Without Coors Banquet.
We wouldn't be doing what we're doing on the scale we're doing.
There's so many more people on the landscape now.
We just can't let fires burn unchecked.
We do have to address them.
And a lot of people look at you like you're crazy
and why you would love doing something like that.
It's very rewarding to be able to do something
to help protect people's lives.