9/15/2023 0 Comments Thomas fire cal fire![]() Dawson’s three-level, 52-unit apartment complex burned to the ground as the Thomas Fire roared through his neighborhood. Timothy Dawson, a C-130J Hercules aircraft maintenance technician with the 146th Airlift Wing, walks the top of a C-130J during an inspection Dec. The US Forest Service, through the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, requests MAFFS assistance across state lines when needed. With California urgently battling killer fires last year, civilian air tanker assets were at times unable to keep up.Īnd that’s when the calls went out to MAFFS-capable C-130 units. Firefighting resources are limited, and some undergrowth burning is a natural ecosystem renewal process. Modern wildland firefighting seeks balance as protection is given to people and structures, with some unpopulated areas allowed to burn. Then in December, a rash of wind-whipped blazes struck southern California. More than 250 fires in northern California in the summer and fall taxed the resources needed to fight them. A full swath from a MAFFS C-130 can cover a line a quarter-mile in length and 100 feet wide, providing vital protection until ground firefighters can establish permanent fire lines in the area.īack at a reloading base, the MAFFS Hercs can be refilled for their next firefighting sortie in less than 12 minutes.Ĭalifornia wildfires burned over 1,266,224 acres in 2017. Both Reserve and ANG C-130s fought the exceptional California fires of 2017.Ī full load of retardant can be released from a MAFFS aircraft in about five seconds, or it can be parceled out in multiple passes. Some Reserve C-130s of the 302nd Airlift Wing at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado are also MAFFS-capable. The Air Force Reserve, meanwhile, operates strictly as a federal asset. The MAFFS II system now in use can carry 3,000 gallons of fire retardant in a pressurized container and pump it into the slipstream. The 146th, out of the Channel Islands Air National Guard Station near Oxnard, Calif., can convert C-130s from transports to firefighters with the installation of MAFFS-the Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System-employing tanks and a huge spray nozzle mounted in a modified left jump door. ![]() Nearly half of USAF’s tactical airlift resources belong to Air National Guard units, including the C-130Js of California’s 146th Airlift Wing. When the state of California faced its most devastating fire season ever in 2017, Air Force Guard and Reserve units were there, trained and ready to step in. 13, 2017, as part of the effort to contain the Thomas Fire. A C-130J-30 drops fire-retardant chemicals onto a ridge line above Santa Barbara, Calif., Dec. ![]()
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