By Tanya Cronin

Provincial air tankers fight flames from the skies

May 31, 2018 | 4:45 PM

KAMLOOPS — When wildfires rage out of control, an essential part of the fire fight comes from the sky. And with an early and active start to the wildfire season in this province, air tankers have already been called out on several missions. Flying into the flames, they lay down fire retardant, slowing the spread of a fire, and assisting ground firefighters who are working to battle Mother Nature. The air tankers have arrived at the Provincial Wildfire Coordination Centre in Kamloops, where they are ready at any given moment to take off, and battle unruly and unwanted fires.   

The flames are often unpredictable, fast-spreading and difficult for ground crews to fight alone. So when wildfires rage out of control, and every second counts, it’s help from the skies that plays an integral part, in what can be a deadly fire fight.

“We fly out with the airplanes, they drop retardant around a fire and slow down its spread, that’s what’s buying the time for the ground crews to be able to get there,” says Michael Benson, superintendent of the Provincial Air Tanker Program.

Air tankers crisscross the skies, unloading dusty red clouds of fire retardant on the flames below. In a joint effort with firefighters on the front lines, the aircrafts protect a massive amount of brush, and feverishly battle mother nature.  

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“They’re very fast, so we’re able to mobilize and cover off large chunks of the province in a very short period of time, and as well we have considerable volume and capacity within that fleet, and we have the ability to be able to send multiple aircraft to any one incident.”

With 24 planes and 17 bases throughout the province, the majority of BC’s air tanker fleet is stationed in Kamloops, where they are dispatched. Between the tankers and skimmers, millions of gallons of retardant and water, are dropped.

“Those are ones that can skim on the water bodies, pick up water itself and then drop directly onto the flames and reduce the intensity of the fire, so what that does, it slows down the spread of the fire from burning down through the retardant.”

It’s been less than a year since BC was on high alert, experiencing one of the worst wildfire seasons on record, homes destroyed and forests blackened. With tinder dry conditions again, already the flames are back.

“In terms of the number of fires we had, it’s not far from our tenure average, we’ve had about 240 to date, what has been unusual though is how aggressive the fires have been and the numbers of hectares burned, we’ve had about 35,500 hectares burn,” says Kyla Fraser, provincial fire information officer.

An early and active start to this year’s wildfire season, with the vast majority of fires to date human caused. Even though a cooler shift in weather is here, the danger isn’t going away.

“A lot of how we predict fire season depends on the rains we see in June, we call them the June rains, it’s really difficult to predict what’s going to happen right now, we’ll just have to see how June plays out.”

Every summer, as wildfires threaten homes and communities across the province, those billowing streaks of red become a familiar sight. Hitting hard and fast, on average the aircrafts do 520 missions, and the work this year has already begun.

“It has been a busy go for us, we’ve had 81 missions so far, we’ve delivered more than a million and a half litres of suppressant on fires, a lot of retardant on those fires,” says Benson.