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Forest Service Looks to Replace Aging Air Tanker Fleet

By Beacon Staff

The U.S. Forest Service announced plans last month to help replace the aging fleet of air tankers it leases to battle wildfires in Montana and across the West. Yet Sen. Jon Tester said the strategy isn’t detailed enough and that the government agency needs to do more before the upcoming wildfire season.

Currently there are only 11 large air tankers that can be leased by the Forest Service. A decade ago there were more than 40, but in recent years many in the fleet have been retired due to age and accidents. The air tankers are used all over the West to drop fire retardant on large blazes.

The Forest Service’s plan, announced Feb. 10, outlined a series of requirements for the new fleet. Those included the ability to carry anywhere from 1,800 to 3,000 gallons of mixed retardant; a minimum cruising speed of 345 miles per hour, so the planes can quickly get to fires; turbine engines, which are easier to maintain than the antiquated piston engines in the current fleet; and the ability to operate out of most federal air tanker bases.

“We need a core fleet of the next generation air tankers to supplement our boots-on-the-ground firefighters for what we know will be longer and more severe wildfire seasons in the years to come,” U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell said in a prepared statement.

At one time, Kalispell was an air tanker reloading site, but, according to Flathead National Forest Fire Management Officer Rick Connell, that equipment has since been dismantled. Now air tankers fighting fires in western Montana have to go to Missoula or Coeur d’Alene, Idaho to be loaded with fire retardant.

“It’s expensive to keep all that equipment going,” Connell said, adding that the equipment was finally removed three years ago. He said the decision to close the Kalispell reload base was made in 1996.

Connell said because of the terrain of Northwest Montana, the Forest Service prefers to use helicopters carrying water, which can easily be reloaded from lakes and rivers. Greg Poncin, the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation’s Kalispell unit manager, said the large air tankers have been used in the area in the past, but only when conditions warranted. He said since the fleet is so small now, it’s constantly being moved around the country to where fire conditions are the worst.

Poncin said although the Forest Service holds the contracts with the air tanker owners, the planes are dispatched through the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise and can be called up by both federal and state agencies, like the Montana DNRC, if the need is warranted.

“If we know we’re in severe fire conditions, we certainly would want to launch them if we had them and the folks on the ground said they needed it,” Poncin said. “It’s just another tool in the tool box.”

The last time a large air tanker was used in Northwest Montana was last summer on the South Fork Lost Creek Fire near Swan Lake. Smaller single-engine air tankers, based out of Ronan and on contract with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, have also been used on fires throughout the area, including the Hellroaring Fire on Big Mountain last summer.

Tester criticized the Forest Service for not doing enough to replace the aging fleet of air tankers, most of which are more than 50 years old. Tester said he is concerned that the current leased fleet would not be able to handle the demand of upcoming fire seasons and told the Forest Service to develop more concrete plans.

“I urge you to contract a new air fleet in a way that quickly increases the Forest Service’s wildland firefighting capabilities while protecting taxpayer dollars,” Tester wrote in a letter to the Forest Service.

A new fleet of aircraft would likely be owned and operated by private contractors, like Neptune Aviation Services Inc. in Missoula. Neptune’s President Dan Snyder said the Forest Service put forth a request for proposals late last year and his company has since responded with an aggressive plan to meet the agency’s demands. Neptune owns nine of the 11 large air tankers the Forest Service currently leases, classified as P2 air tankers. The company also owns a BAe-146 jet air tanker, which Snyder said is a prime example of what the next generation of air tankers will look like. He said more BAe-146 tankers could be added to the fleet if the Forest Service decides to move forward with Neptune’s proposal.

If Neptune is picked to be one of the companies to provide new planes, Snyder said the company’s next contract with the Forest Service (the agency leases the fleet for five years at a time) would reflect the cost of the new planes.

“That’s one of the things the agency is going to have to grapple with is how to fund this (project),” Snyder said.