11:55 AM MDT on Friday, July 29, 2005

Adam Atchison
Idaho's NewsChannel 7

BOISE -- Military planes have been busy attacking Idaho fires from the air all day.

KTVB

Air tankers play a critical role in battling wildfires.

As fire season flares up, air tankers are busy refueling and reloading at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise.

NewsChannel 7 visited NIFC to see firsthand how they get fire retardant from the flight line to the fire lines.

It is a busy afternoon at NIFC headquarters. Four air tankers are on a constant rotation, touching down and returning to fires throughout the region in under an hour.

“Our job is to get them loaded and dispatched as quickly as we can,” said Tim Grantham, Forest Service supervisor.

On the tarmac each plane's special firefighting system is loaded with retardant for fire lines.

The fire retardant comes in powder form and contains fertilizer salts and a coloring agent. It’s mixed with water inside a big tank and loaded onto planes to drop on fires.

“We stretch the loading hose out to the air tanker. It takes about six minutes to load 2,700 gallons of retardant onto the airplane,” said Grantham.

Already this year thousands of gallons of retardant have been dumped on several fires, including flames in the Boise foothills.

Trevor Smith-KTVB

It only takes crews about six minutes to reload these air tankers with 2,700 gallons of fire retardant.

“It wets down a strip of fuel in front of the fire and it buys time for our ground firefighters to get the fire lines built,” said Ken Frederick, NIFC spokesman.

Frederick says the liquid can suppress flames, but doesn't always put them out completely. The final mix weighs a little more than water and firefighters on the ground are trained to watch for falling retardant.

“It can knock a tree down, it dislodges boulders. If it's dropped fairly high, it can fall like a rain storm. But if it's dropped fairly low, for example in heavy timber, it's almost like a bulldozer,” said Frederick.

And the goal on the flight line is to dispatch these air tankers quickly, providing crews on the ground with critical support.

“It takes a lot of people doing hard work when it's hot in the summertime to pull off an operation like this, but it really does help,” said Frederick.

NIFC has access to eight military air tankers during the fire season.

Only four are being used right now, but the others are on stand by, just in case they are needed.

NIFC also uses smaller private planes and helicopters to fight fires.