Stu Sprung on the larger challenges on the aerial firefighting community faces as the climate evolves

00:00:48 – Gideon

So Stu, thanks for joining us today. It’s much appreciated. I mean when you look at something like this and something on the scale, I mean, is that something, I mean, you’ve been in aerial firefighting quite a while, you know. Is there anything like that on this scale? Have you seen anything even approaching this before? 

00:01:08 – Stu

It’s interesting because, well, the answer’s no. Obviously, out the gate. I think probably the only thing that made that type of impression, as far as the stunning and the shocking visuals would be, you know, compared to probably 911.

When we had to go and work out there, where you just show up and you’re like, this is something I’ve never seen before and I’ll never forget, you know, and I can only imagine for the crews on the ground and in the air, they felt the same way.

All of us have seen far more scope of damage. You know, in 2020 and we had 4,000,000 acres in the state. And in 2021 we had 2,000,000 acres, but so much devastation in a residential area. I think in LA, the last big one was in I think ‘93 with the Bel Air fire.

And I think it lost in the neighbourhood 4 or 4500 homes and I think this one’s already up to 10,000. So it’s staggering the amount of damage and and how quickly it was done was the other thing I think that is gonna make it so unique from other similar situations.

00:02:26 – Gideon

Oh yeah. I mean, for sure, I mean it’s a scale, you know, talk about the four, four hundred, 450 houses in the Bell Alpha, which is 10,000, it’s an exponential difference, isn’t it? And when you’re confronted with an event on this scale I mean. Where do you even begin?

00:02:44 – Stu

Well, I think that the simple thing is, you use what you have in the aviation wise, which is just what’s in service at the time, and then you just never give up, right? And I think that’s what we saw on day one with the aerial firefighting and and that’s the thing, it’s a fair thing. There was so much happening on the ground. I think everybody is aware of, you know, our conversation will kind of be focused on what happened in the air. But it was all in support of everything that was occurring on the ground and that’s really as our primary and only a focus. For us, I feel sometimes we keep it simple. What do we do? We essentially buy time for firefighters on the ground so they can actually be the ones to put the fires out. We don’t put the fires out, we slow them down. So the ground fires, can put them out. Fire’s not out until it’s out and we can’t really do that from the air or the ground. Firefighters have to do that.

So everything we do is in support of them, and then I always say, kind of tongue in cheek that you know, beyond that we’re, I say cheap insurance, maybe we could be positioned in the right place at the right time if ground crews or civilians get in trouble, we can go and maybe mitigate that if we’re in the right place at the right time. That’s really our purpose.

So that first day. You know the winds 100 miles an hour. It’s moving 5 football field per minute. There is literally nothing you could do to properly prepare for something like that, and I won’t even address on the ground, but certainly not in the air. The things that we have operational limitations of the aircraft that provide us safe margins when we’re operating. So that has to be maintained, and then the other thing is the effectiveness of what we’re doing, right. If the if the air tankers are dropping retardant and it’s blowing into the Pacific before it even hits the ground, then we’re not being effective. And the risk we’re taking is not being met with some sort of benefit that that makes it worthwhile.

That being said, the cruise that first day were going to be the end service crew, so the Los Angeles city in Los Angeles County Fire Department, the two scoopers that were in service, those were the aircraft that really went in there, and policy wise, when we have a programme, you know that we have to have safety measures in place for operations, right? So what do we do?   

Well, the aircraft has limitations out the gate, right. So you can’t even take off if the aircraft, if the wind at the airport is exceeding the aircraft operations, right? So we have that one in place enroute in the enroute environment, we use about 30 knots, 30 miles an hour, so about 40 miles an hour, right? Just being just rough as a max because we know that that’s, you know, that’s we’re starting to see less effectiveness, but the issue is that you know a lot of times in these environments, they’re not in the flat terrain where there’s a steady prediction of wind, right? You can get it there and you could – the fire could be in a place that it’s in a valley or in a sheltered area where that wind’s not being affected. So why would we restrict use, you know, operations in that area if it’s not been affected by the winds? 

So we leave a lot to the judgement of the pilots, they’re highly trained. It takes us all to say, on our tanker pilot side, a couple years for those guys to finish that curriculum. Helicopter is a little bit different, but the same thing they’re provided with the training to to have the expertise and they actually come here, you know, most of our pilots come from the industry with an entire career of experience before they ever get in the aircraft. 

We don’t teach pilot training, we teach the mission and if needed and need be the aircraft, and so that’s what we spent our time. Teaching to provide them with the depth of knowledge to be able to make that decision, we have to trust them with that when they’re in there and that’s what you really saw, not just with the helicopters, but with also the fixed wing.

They were looking for areas where even though the wind was blowing 100 miles an hour, that they could possibly go in and affect a little bit of benefit safely within their own margins, but also deliver the, it was mostly – it was all water the first day onto the fire to try to mitigate it and you know, try to get it something close to a house that is obviously going to go, that may have people inside.

00:07:18 – Gideon

So I mean just thinking about you turning up day one with the scoopers and the rotary assets and most by definition water dropping. What about the logistics of moving in retardant into the area?

Well actually, let’s back up a little bit. You know, normally at this time of year, I remember I was in Sacramento myself, end of February beginning of March last year for the aerial firefighting conference and we went out to McLellan, and I mean it was like a small Air Force you know but everything back for annuals and all that work being being low season.

Now, surely you know how do you how do you spin up from that mode to, you know, full on fighting mode in in a matter of hours?

00:08:11 – Stu

That’s a great question. 

One thing I want to say before you said small Air Force, that was brought up because I did a presentation at Lockheed and one of the questions they had is like, where do you guys you have a lot of aircraft, where do you fit in the worlds Air Force? It’s a good question.

And so I went in and I searched until I figured it out that we are about right in the middle about the 50th percentile for Air Force sizes, you know, internationally and we’re even with Portugal, which was funny because they were in the audience when I was bringing the stock up.

They’re like what? But so just a little side fact, but you’re exactly right. Yeah. Typically, in the industry, not just with Cal Fire and the agency aircraft, this is typically what we say our winter maintenance season. The other thing that happens, it’s the time we always talk about the aircraft, but not always the cruise, that the pilots are also in a kind of a stand down mode for a little bit because they need the rest, right?

The fires seasons have gone from, you know, 6 to 9 months to year, round and typically before that they were engaged that entire time. Well now that you know there’s they’re engaged the entire year so having them, giving them a moment to refresh and reset, spend time with their families is really important. So while the aircraft are getting maintained in a sense, so are the crews, and giving them a chance to reset before we start training in our training typically starts in in January, and then in earnest over the next four months in preparation for the next season, so we’re kind of training already in that down season, but in a much lower tempo, at least for probably for the students, not for the instructors, so.

00:10:09 – Gideon
Pull those chiefs away from the sand tables and here’s a really big sand table to play with.

00:10:16 – Stu

Oh yeah, under 100%. I mean in some at some level, everybody is still engaged, right? They’re either coming out of it or getting ready to get back into training or into it itself. We do have two bases in Southern California that are a year round basis so they were there available as well, and the other thing too is that the way that our maintenance is not all that – so all of the aircraft come back in during winter maintenance on the fixed wing side, just so we can maintain them, but they’re also there, just available and they’re not all out of service at the same time, some haven’t gone into maintenance yet, some maintenance is complete, so there’s aircraft and service there, a fair amount, over half at any given time.

So in a situation like this with the Los Angeles fires, I would say that it was – that time when though it was to the wind was just too high to effectively operate, that time was being well used to go out, not just to Cal Fire into the state and find out, OK, what pilots are available to come in, what aircraft can we spool up and get ready to be operational in that time, that entire 24 hour period before, that second kind of phase of operations, the next day went to effect when the winds died and you could actually have operations, those pilots have already been called in, the aircraft have been designated, signed order numbers and were able to respond down there, which if anyone’s watching, you know any of the you know ADSB you saw S-2’s just slowly – pairs of S-2’s for the most part, making their way down to Southern California tanker 122, at first C130 and helicopters actually at one point I even saw Huey going down there, like, OK, you know, they’re and I don’t know, a rescue helko. I don’t know what they was being used for. I don’t want to bother him, but everything was being considered as a resource because of the magnitude of what was going on.

00:12:00 – Gideon

I was just going to say, just for a note just for people with the UH-1 reference, GAUFAR is in the in the process of transitioning away from the UH-1, which was the workhorse of the rotary fleet for a number of years, to the Firehawk platform, and I noticed again when I was in McClellan back in March. Well, March of last year, there was still a few UH-1’s around and I was s putting the questions saying so what’s happening to the UH-1’s ones and they’re still doing their thing as it’s so.

00:12:47 – Stu

Yeah. And we could talk about that a little bit more too, finishing the thought the you know, we can’t do what we do, our fleet is very much initial attack oriented.

The number of aircraft that are staffed out in throughout the state at any given time and the personnel dedicated to that are measured by our ability to essentially, we have a mandate to, and this is written in state code, is any new fire and state responsibility area, we have to respond within 20 minutes in the air side, we add on that we try to keep 95% of those under 10 acres.

So our whole force lay down in helicopters and fixed wing is to meet that mandate. So that covers the initial attack part of it in the region that it’s in, when fires go above that 10 acres and become greater incidents and then go into a second operational period, which is the next day, we require these partnerships with industry to be able to help us meet the need to medicate those incidents.

And so we have phenomenal relationships with them, they’re absolutely part of the team and family, and in this case with Los Angeles, the same thing happened.

They’re doing the same thing. They’re crafted out of service. Their pilots are probably, you know resetting somewhere.

And the same time we had I saw the same thing, a Type 1 helitanker that were in service with us all fire season last fires and fighting day and night, some of the night water droppers were now being engaged flying the same path, you know, with the with our own S-2’s and Hawks down to that area to be operational, not just helicopters, but also the fixed wing.

00:14:39 – Gideon

I mean, it is extraordinary. I mean, just as you say, look at the the flight aware tracks, stuff like that. Yeah. Phenomenal, phenomenal spool up.

00:14:50 – Stu

The next day, when I was looking between the two fires. The Palisades and the Eaton fire. And this doesn’t count the aircraft on the ground, reloading, refuelling, whatever, I counted 25 aircraft in the air on the next day between the two incidents.

00:15:06 – Gideon

Yeah, I mean, it’s it’s extraordinary, extraordinary build up.

You know when you just the whole scale of the event, but I’m just thinking about some of the logistics, you know, thinking about how do you how do you move adequate quantities of retardant from you know where it’s stored to, or is a lot of it already stockpiled? You mentioned you already have, you’ve got the two Southern California year round bases there’s lot of it already stockpiled at those facilities?.

00:15:35 – Stu

They have, you know, there’s there’s retardant that is there, but there’s agreements in place with the manufacturer already because everybody needs a plan for this right ’cause, it does happen everywhere. You never know where the next fire is gonna be, every base is is is responsible to have a plan to be, to have some replacement of retardant if it gets used or if they’re anticipating it right. So I would say in this case Boxfield was it’s a Fed tank.

Most of the retardant was being reloaded out of, it’s a big base, they probably had a good stockpile there and they certainly, I would say had semis full of retardant driving towards it, probably right along with those aircraft even before probably the night before.

They were probably already driving. The company itself was probably driving retardant down to that base, knowing that that would be the primary base of reload for for especially the larger aircraft

The helicopters continue to use water I think the water help tap into the scooper,  they can use retardant, but sometimes when there’s so much aircraft, there’s so much going on, keeping some simplicity in the operation, as far as not over complicating it with some helicopter, drone or target, some are doing water. It’s easier, especially for the aerial supervisors. You know, position, who is listening to six radios talking to the ground, I see managing the airspace, trying not to make the plan too fancy sometimes is more effective.

00:17:13 – Gideon

Sure. And I guess it’s also, you know, playing to the strength of the asset, you know if you if you think about the you know the quantities involved, if you’re laying down retardant line, you need consistency and length of line and and that comes from from Lowe’s larger you know fixed wing assets.

Whereas you know the the heli assets are way better than the direct attack mode of. You’re giving them manoeuvrability and all those things. I guess it’s it’s that thing, that element to play, to play to the strengths.

00:17:43 – Stu

Absolutely. You have kind of have to commit to the director in the indirect in the area that you’re working in and then leave it at that. It’s you can do it concurrently and it happens. You know you can and that’s that’s that’s that’s the dance of the of the aerial supervisor.

Holding out the aircraft like in the helicopters, come in and hit a couple soft spots. Come back. You know, keeping them off the line. ’cause you don’t want to dilute the retardant line in any way or break it because it defeats the purpose of the whole thing so.

It is a very delicate dance and you know, I always, I speak very highly of our aerial supervisors because they have so much responsibility and their awareness has to be constantly at peak for everything and they do a tremendous job.

00:18:33 – Gideon
You know, factually they’re they’re playing sort of, you know, kind of a high speed 3 dimensional chess Against the player who doesn’t know the rules and makes it, goes along, I guess. Yeah, it seems kind of, I don’t know a little bit, maybe a little bit callous while the fires are still burning to talk about Where does this, Where do we go in the future? You know, what do we think about what are, what are? What are the kind of challenges? Obviously there’ll be lessons learned and people will debrief and say, you know, well, let’s this work great and that maybe not so much.

00:19:07 – Stu
Yeah.

00:19:09 – Gideon
And we can tweak and analyse all that stuff and that’s.That’s for the debrief in the coming weeks and months. But just thinking in the wider sense, what if you had a shopping list of things you’d have liked to see? As things change where the seasons have got longer, assets can’t be shifted from one part of the globe to the other.

Stuff would, would you say? Oh, yeah. Here’s my shopping list of things we should think about doing.

00:19:37 – Stu
Yeah, I would say for for this incident in particular, one of the quotes that I thought nailed it the most is that an article I read is that:

“ you could have had a fire truck in every single driveway and it wouldn’t have made a difference.”

And I think that’s an important highlight to hear because it’s like there is literally nothing. I think that we could have done, anything that could have been done would have had to have been sort of, you know, something that mitigated in advance with the with the that that even even then it may not have made a difference with the vegetation. 

But I don’t think once that, once that spark was laid might have to have seen some videos of what was reported to be kind of the initial of that fire, because it did happen in the day, which a lot of times these happen at night.

So, but once that took a foothold, and then there was, like, literally nothing that could be done. I’m just speaking to this incident, but I think also that this what this incident does and what it has done, from what I’ve seen is that it has brought the issue to the foreground. I think a lot of places around the world are going, that could happen To us, you know we’ve, we’ve talked About this many times.

We’re not prepared, we’re not funded. We don’t a plan and what happens is day-to-day from my experience, day-to-day operations end up slowly

Kind of eroding that urgency. And then it becomes back to our normal selves and I think that’s just natural. As human nature. This is how we are right so, what are some of the things I think what you’re referring to are the some of the things that I’m interested in.

00:21:18 – Gideon
Mhm.

00:21:19 – Stu
Especially in my previous job for trying to move forward, how do we adjust to the new normal? How do we right size to the new normal? And I think that’s really the stuff I think there’s there’s times where we could take advantage of and  there’s resources we can improve on possibly, I think with that I just look at supply and demand.

When it’s going down, what are the hardest things, hardest resources to get, the hardest resources are large air tankers, so type Type 1 larger tanker. So 3000 gallons and above, and type – now Type 1 helitankers. Basically in the same realm 2000 above.

And then, you know, adequate aerial supervision is the other piece that has to go with it. I think the operational period of the night is something that obviously most people are paying attention to that that we really committed to being involved in. We initially did it with our own programme, with our Hawks, and once we started getting, we’re still learning, but still we’re we’re starting to be comfortable with the idea.

We realise that it was an effective tool, but it wasn’t quite enough to to impact the actual need, especially at night. So engaging the Type 1 helitankers night dropping under NBG Was the other part.

So anything we could do to to promote those pieces of the puzzle?

Large art tankers type 1 hella tankers, effective available aerial supervision, day and night. All these things are currently globally in short supply, so whatever we can do to further those and make those more of a resource would be good, you know.

I also think you know that everything is about time and space, right? If you’re trying to solve a global issue versus just your just your state or just your country, or you’re looking at, you’re looking at it from a big issue.

You you know, the helicopters can’t get around as fast as the as the jets, right? So you know, how is there? There’s not really currently a process in place to move those aircraft around efficiently to make them, help when they’re needed. So, I think some sort of large, you know, incorporating some sort of large cargo aircraft, a C-5, something like that or or a some C-5’s to incorporate in this. So if if something happens that those aircraft can be loaded on.

This is a little outside of my realm, but as far as like loading aircraft and other aircraft and and putting them back in service, I’m not making this guy more up, but I think that that would be a piece of it too. That would open up this capability to the rest of the world, so if something like this were to happen in a place where all the helicopters can fly to like they did in Los Angeles.

Then we could still, You know, within 48 hours provides some assets that could could help mitigate those issues

00:24:22 – Gideon
Or indeed shift them, you know reasonably quickly. You know, I remember again, I’ve said it several times, but going back to last March. At the time, at the time I was at the conference in Sacramento, there was a wildfire broken out in Texas.

I think eventually got to like a million acres or something ridiculous like that. Helicopters are great, but air speed is not one of the one of the advantages. So even positioning from you know assets from California or wherever to Texas is.

That’s a logistic nightmare in terms of State Department and everything like that. So I guess part of that bigger, that bigger matrix.

00:25:01 – Stu
It is.

00:25:07 – Gideon
As you as you as you already just said that, you know, we’re sitting here every every sector of certainly the helicopter industry and the fixed wing too. You know, go try and find a helicopter right now go try if you if you go down to if you go down to Lockheed Martin or Sikorsky rather and say can I? Can I have a? Can I have a Firehawk?

They’re going to say, sure, put down your money and we’ll see you in about Four years.

00:25:34 – Stu
Yeah. And you know, I think that that, that it behoves us in industry to start looking to, like I said, I think you know in the in the Hawk itself, it’s a very effective tool, and what’s good about the hawk? It’s a great multi purpose Swiss army knife of the fire service, you could do air rescue, crew transport also water dropping, a variety of things which makes it a very, very effective and and and useful platform for any agency or or operator. If you’re going pure firefighting water dropping, you know the larger aircraft or you’re maybe going to get more bang for your buck, and especially if you’re looking at some sort of like more of a a global resource type thing. I think looking bigger. to some aircraft that maybe aren’t even quite being used yet, you know right now the Chinook has been very effective. I’m a big, big supporter of the Chinook, but also those as a in surplus are very difficult to get.

So what else is out there that that we could maybe has the same capacity that may be readily available in surplus, that has good sparing right. That’s the other piece. You can’t just pull an aircraft out, and that requires so much maintenance and not have adequate spares to keep it running. You know, for as long as you’re gonna operate it. So all these things have to be considered and figured. I really think that like the Chinook and the Type 1 helotanker as far as that platform has really been the game changer here.

The large air tankers are good because they have long legs. They can move fast with large payloads, right? The helicopter is how we’re going to move into the night. You know the the, the large Type 1 multi engine helicopters are gonna be the way that we can move into the night. I don’t know if I’ll still be around when I would think that flying a fixed wing aircraft.

Low level dropping retardant at night, man especially, would be a safe thing, so having that kind of mindset, it’s helicopters that are that are going to do that, and you can get with some of these helic helicopters, large air tanker type.

Capacity in a helicopter, you can go low level. Low under goggles. Not under goggles day and night you can drop retardant. You could drop water. You can build a line just like a large air tanker at night, safely in a helicopter. And I really think that that is the that’s a huge piece of of our industry that you’ll see us working on, I think the autonomous space will be a part of that in in our future as well, and I’m excited to kind of see what’s going on with that as well.

00:28:15 – Gideon       
 Great stuff. I mean it’s, it’s, we could talk all night. I’m sure about all all the, all the elements and push. Pull. I wanted to talk about using UAVs as a monitoring system with, you know, Hawks on on QR, you know, quick reaction alert and all that kind of stuff.

00:28:20 – Stu
Yeah.

00:28:33 – Gideon
But sadly, time is is our enemy and so but still really appreciate you making the time to sit down with me and and have a chat about this subject. It’s been fascinating. I really appreciate it.

00:28:46 – Stu
Thanks Gideon.

00:28:49 – Gideon
That has been the first episode of the RotorHub International Podcast. Join us again in two weeks’ time when we’ll be talking about another issue facing the industry and trying to unpick the threats.