California has a very large new tool in its arsenal to fight wildfires, and it’s a veteran that has seen battles before.
State officials announced Monday that after years of waiting, they finally have a C-130 Hercules cargo plane ready to fly in the firefighting fleet of Cal Fire, the state’s primary firefighting agency.
This C-130, a 1985 surplus model acquired from the U.S. Coast Guard, is a type of plane used by the military since the 1950s as a workhorse to move soldiers, cargo, even tanks and Jeeps. Cal Fire crews retrofitted the huge plane — whose 133-foot wingspan is the size of an 11-story building laid on its side — to carry 4,000 gallons of fire retardant, more than triple the capacity of the other tankers that Cal Fire has been using for years.
“They can travel farther, and carry more fire retardant,” said Cal Fire Battalion Chief Brent Pascua. “We will have these planes placed to where they can hit anywhere in California within 20 minutes, no matter how far or how remote. They are awesome. They can travel far. They can travel fast. We want to get to fires quickly so we can keep fires small. This is going to help tremendously.”
Capable of flying 800 miles at speeds up to 368 mph, the C-130 has the greatest speed and range in the state’s airborne fleet.
The federal government has plans to transfer six other C-130s to California in the coming years. The one unveiled Monday will be based at McClellan Airtanker Base near Sacramento. Another is coming to Cal Fire’s base in Fresno by the end of this year, with another scheduled for Cal Fire’s Ramona air base in San Diego County in early 2025, Pascua said.
California becomes the first state to own, maintain and operate its own C-130s for firefighting.
The planes are not without controversy, however.
In 2002, a privately owned C-130 under contract with the U.S. Forest Service crashed in Mono County while it was fighting the Cannon Fire in the Eastern Sierra. Shocking video from a passerby showed the plane drop its load, and as it was climbing, both wings broke off. All three crewmen were killed.
An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board found that the crash was caused by a structural failure that included cracks around the rivets of the aging 1957 plane where the wings attached to the fuselage.
Afterward, the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management decided not to renew leases with the Air Force for nine C-130s over concerns about the safety of the planes, which had been in service since the 1950s.
Pascua said Monday that each of the seven former Coast Guard planes that California is reusing for firefighting is undergoing a $6.5 million retrofit job which includes adding the 4,000-gallon tank along with replacing the inner and outer wing boxes, or the parts of the plane that connect the wings to the fuselage.
Cal Fire already has about 60 helicopters and planes, an assemblage that Gov. Gavin Newsom regularly refers to as the largest civil aerial firefighting fleet in the world.
Firefighting experts said Monday that having the extra aircraft is a good step.
“Adding firepower to our suppression toolbox will definitely help contain many wildfires before they become large,” said Zeke Lunder, a wildfire analyst and geographer based in Chico.
But there are other steps the state needs to make more progress, he added. Those include reducing overgrown brush and trees which have built up over decades of fire suppression and make fires burn more intensely when they do begin, better land use planning, and cheaper housing options for people who want to move away from high fire-risk rural areas.
“Our most destructive fires often start under severe weather conditions or in places where firefighting is impossible,” said Lunder, who runs Lookout Media, a digital communications company focused on wildfire and forestry issues. “Adding more tankers won’t change this. The Park Fire started under high-voltage transmission lines and tankers couldn’t drop directly on the fire during initial attack because they can’t drop right on top of the wires.”
Newsom said Monday that in an era when temperatures continue to steadily rise, having the seven C-130 tankers will help firefighters better limit the spread of fires.
“The climate crisis has made wildfires more destructive, and we need to match these threats with new resources,” Newsom said. “This aircraft will beef up Cal Fire’s ability to hit fires earlier and harder, better protecting Californians.”
The first C-130 took years to arrive.
In 2018, after California had suffered a deadly fire season, the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein wrote legislation that required the U.S. Air Force to U.S. Air Force to convert seven surplus Coast Guard C-130s into firefighting tanker planes for Cal Fire.
But the Air Force’s lengthy process in advertising, reviewing and awarding contracts — which can take two years in some cases — followed by the COVID pandemic, slowed progress. Frustrated, California leaders pushed for the planes.
Finally, last December, Sen. Alex Padilla, D-California, and Ken Calvert, R-Corona, inserted language in the defense budget bill requiring the Air Force to transfer the planes to California.
“Now,” said Padilla, “California will be able to respond to wildfires more quickly and effectively as we face drier conditions and increasingly devastating fires.”
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