How Arizona aerial firefighters take down wildfires from the air

As Arizona prepares for a potentially intense, busier-than-normal wildfire season, pilots with Western Pilot Service are practicing how to best aid firefighters from the air.

The Phoenix-based company, which has planes in Buckeye, Safford and other parts of the state, is contracted with the federal government to assist with firefighting efforts as necessary.

Beryl Shears, the president of the company, told The Arizona Republic he started the company in 1989 after working in agriculture as a crop duster when someone from the U.S. Department of the Interior approached him and other pilots with similar experiences about using the planes to dump fire retardant rather than pesticides or fertilizer.

Shears said the government was curious about using smaller planes in greater numbers to combat wildfires in regions after the large air tankers that are capable of holding thousands of gallons of fire retardant had already flown north.

Today, the company flies a plane called an Air Tractor AT-802, a single-engine air tanker capable of holding up to 800 gallons of fire retardant that it can drop with precise accuracy as close to the ground as 60 feet. When asked why he uses smaller planes over the larger air tankers capable of holding thousands of gallons, Shears said flexibility was the reason.

"If you think about it, would you want one great big fire truck in the city of Phoenix that had to go everywhere?" Shears said. "Or, do you want a whole lot of little trucks scattered throughout the fire stations so the first two trucks can get there quickly? And then if you need more for what they call a structure like a second alarm (fire), you bring five more fire trucks, and now you have five times the capacity that you had in the beginning."

Shears said it's also faster to refuel and replenish fire retardant in the smaller planes, which can be back in the air as quickly as six minutes thanks to a pit crew not dissimilar to the crews at NASCAR races.

Shears said pilots assisting firefighters are mainly focused on addressing the edges of the fire rather than the main body itself.

"What's already inside and burned is of no concern," Shears said. "Even if there are trees still burning—they're going to burn. They're going to go out. So we're working the edges. We're protecting it from spreading."

But that doesn't leave firefighting from the air without its challenges. While getting close to the fire helps ensure the fire retardant lands accurately, it often involves flying through smoke and dealing with updrafts from the heat. Pilots also practice flying low in the mountains, where they might have to avoid chairlifts used by skiers and snowboarders.

Shears added that sometimes pilots are instructed to dump retardant relatively far away from where the fire actually is and light another fire to burn back toward the original wildfire to exhaust its fuel.

And while planes, both large and small, can provide much-needed aerial support, Shears said firefighters risking their lives on the ground are still a necessary component when it comes to combating wildfires. He explained that fire retardant can slow a fire's spread, but it loses efficiency if it's burned through, similar to how the flame of a match stays at the tip for a few seconds before eating through the retardant and spreading to the rest of the match.

"That retardant reacts with the cellulose and it slows the spread of the fire," Shears said. "It may put out the majority of it, but there may be one little spot that breaks through that fire line and now that whole line burns up as the fire escapes again. So it takes ground crews to put these fires out."

Shears said fire retardant is often colored pink or red to ensure it's visible and allow pilots to see where earlier drops were made to ensure the lines of retardant are connected. This can be especially important in places like Arizona, which often has vegetation grow in the winter before dying and becoming flammable tinder in the summer.

John Truett, a fire management officer with the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management, previously told The Republic that forecasts showed winter rains and snow doubled the amount of fuel loads for wildfires in higher risk regions such as areas south of the Mogollon Rim, the Tonto National Forest and across the Sonoran landscapes.

Wildfires have already sprung up in Arizona this year, with one near Florence burning about 2,000 acres in the Pinal County area, as well as a wildfire in rural Cochise County near the community of Whetstone that burned about 23 acres and killed an elderly man.

While it remains to be seen whether Arizona will have a destructive wildfire season or not, Shears' pilots and others remain at the ready.

Perry Vandell is a breaking news and public safety reporter. Reach him at perry.vandell@gannett.com or 602-444-2474. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter: @PerryVandell.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: AZ pilots who fight fires from the air preparing for wildfire season