The art and science of fighting wildfires from above

Eric Johnson likens the tool he uses to do his job as "A little like flying an 80-knot shopping cart."

Johnson works for Aero Spray out of Appleton, Minn. and helps crews battle wildfires from the single seat of his Air Tractor AT-802 Fire Boss.

Air Tractor? Guess one can get the picture how these boxy-looking aircraft look like a shopping cart.

Johnson has worked locally in July's Watermelon Hill fire near Fishtrap. He flew to help douse a blaze that torched the hillside below Spokane's High Drive, as well the massive 250,000 acre Carlton Complex in the Methow Valley.

He was a regular out in the area, putting his converted aerial spray plane - now outfitted with pontoons - onto Silver Lake to gulp up several hundred gallons of water.

"I really thank everybody for clearing the middle of the lake for us, that helps us out," Johnson said from his Deer Park Airport base.

If he's familiar with a source, like Silver Lake, "I'll come up on the lake and if it looks clear and I can see a clear path down through it, I'll just go do it," Johnson said.

In unfamiliar territory Johnson's plane will generally make a pass over an area and alert anyone on the lake that he's about to pick up water. Each scooping can collect up to 600-800 gallons of water, but that depends on how much fuel he's carrying.

"We can haul 800 gallons but we have to be way low on fuel for it to haul that much," Johnson said.

Depending on the needs of the fire bosses on the ground he will drop either water, or a combination that includes chemicals.

"The stuff we drop is a gel, a foam or straight water," Johnson said. "They are designed to suppress the fire itself. The gels are designed to retard the evaporation of the water."

The orange or red liquid coming from an aircraft is retardant. "That's designed to drop ahead of a fire, then the fire burns into it," Johnson said. Retardant can lay on the ground a week and still be effective, he added.

Helping fight fire from the air depends on help from both the skies above, and on the ground.

At High Drive Johnson was assisted above by a person called an "air-tac." "A lot of the (air-tac) guys are retired smoke jumpers," Johnson said and know how fires behave.

They coordinate with the incident commander on the ground who come up with a plan and communicates it to the pilot. Sometimes Johnson is first on the scene and he's told "To do what I think's best."

The Deer Park fire bomber base operates with contracts serving multiple jurisdictions such as the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

Locally the season has been relatively tame, the Watermelon Hill fire being the exception. "It's been a pretty intense year for the middle part (of the state), but it's slackened off now," Johnson said.

Johnson's stayed close to home, just north of Deer Park, outside of a few trips to Central Washington.

Johnson has done crop spraying in the past, but he's been strictly a fire bomber for years he said. He once flew both the 802 and PBY down in Columbia spraying to eradicate drugs. Johnson also flew 18 years on the PBY, until 2004 when they were grounded for safety concerns.

Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].