Cal Fire adds huge new firefighting tool as summer fire season approaches

With summer wildfire season just around the corner California s fire bureaucrats on Thursday unveiled a powerful new tool to help reduce the danger of major fires racing out of control At a news conference with Gov Gavin Newsom in Sacramento the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection the state s primary firefighting agency rolled out a new a C- Hercules cargo plane which has been added to its already expansive firefighting fleet The plane a model acquired from the U S Coast Guard is a type of aircraft used by the military since the s as a workhorse to move soldiers and cargo Cal Fire crews retrofitted the huge plane whose -foot wingspan is a little larger than that of a modern Boeing to carry gallons of fire retardant more than triple the ceiling of the other tankers that Cal Fire has been using for years The plane is the second C- in Cal Fire s aviation fleet The first one a former Coast Guard model put into utility last August was used heavily flying missions responding to fires and dropping gallons of retardant ever since Capable of flying miles at speeds up to mph the C- has the greatest speed and range in the state s airborne fleet The quicker we can put retardant on the ground the quicker we can slow a fire s progress revealed Cal Fire Deputy Director Nick Schuler The goal is to be in even the majority remote parts of California in minutes The state is large We want to respond hurriedly We try to keep of all fires at acres or less The first C- plane flew over the Los Angeles fires in January and was called in last October when a brush fire started in the Oakland Hills one day before the rd anniversary of the Oakland Hills Fire which killed people and destroyed homes The fire last year which alarmed residents and fire commanders caused evacuations but burned just acres and damaged two homes because firefighters were able to get it under control briskly Cal Fire California s lead state firefighting agency on Thursday April unveiled a new C- tanker plane shown here in April at McClellan Airtanker Base near Sacramento that it acquired from the U S Coast Guard The plane can drop nearly four times as much fire retardant as other Cal Fire air craft The federal regime has plans to donate five other surplus C- s to California in the coming years The first one unveiled last year is based at McClellan Airtanker Base near Sacramento The new one Thursday will be located at Cal Fire s base in Fresno with another scheduled for Cal Fire s Ramona air base in San Diego County this summer and the rest expected to arrive in and at Cal Fire bases in Chico Paso Robles and McClellan California becomes the first state to own maintain and operate its own C- s for firefighting though federal agencies like the U S Forest System and private contractors have used them at times in the state Fire experts say tanker planes that can fly faster advance farther and drop more fire retardant are a good thing but not the only way to reduce fire hazard in an era where hotter drier weather from situation change is making forest fires more explosive It s great to have more tools for suppression but the real battle is prevention stated Leroy Westerling a state and fire scientist at UC Merced Managing vegetation to reduce fire exposure to your home and having fire-resistant roof materials and screens on the attics are just as significant If you haven t done that you are just counting on them to save you Nevertheless Westerling commented the new planes are a good step In years with bad conditions for wildfire dry hot windy conditions over large areas of the state with prospective ignitions at any time chosen fires are going to get away he disclosed But the state is doing what it can to expand its ability to save people s homes and people s lives Tools like this help improve our odds Each of the seven former Coast Guard planes that California is reusing for firefighting was acquired from the federal establishment at no cost when former President Biden signed measure pushed by former Sen Dianne Feinstein Sen Alex Padilla both Democrats and Rep Ken Calvert R-Corona They are given a million retrofit job that includes adding the -gallon tank along with replacing the inner and outer wing boxes or the parts of the plane that connect the wings to the fuselage to strengthen them Cal Fire already has helicopters and planes an assemblage that Newsom regularly refers to as the largest civil aerial firefighting fleet in the world Historically more acres tend to burn in California after dry winters than after wet winters when moisture levels of trees and brush remain higher for longer into the summer Despite a wet winter in Northern California this year however California is off to a rough start in Through Monday there have been wildfires that have burned acres in California killing people and destroying structures according to Cal Fire That s slightly less than the -year average number of fires through April but far more acres that have burned on average during the previous five years by this time of year The reason Roughly of the acres burned came in four fires in January in Los Angeles and San Diego counties when dry conditions combined with unusually fast Santa Ana winds reaching up to mph in various places to create historic fire storms The Eaton Fire in Altadena and the Palisades Fire in Pacific Palisades both of which began on Jan and were fully contained by Jan killed people and destroyed more than homes Fire pitfall remains low now across largest part of the state The Sierra Nevada is still covered in snow Reservoirs are full And rainfall totals particularly north of I- are above average for the winter Menace in Southern California which received several storms this spring but remains below average is higher