Firefighters facing down a slow-starting wildfire season in most of the west are ready with more retardant-dropping aircraft than last year, and experts say drought-stricken California may need all the help they can bring to bear, reports USA Today.
At this windswept Air National Guard base, pilots and ground personnel are practicing how to use some of the largest firefighting aircraft available, eight military C-130 cargo planes equipped with tanks blasting out up to 3,000 of gallons of retardant in as little as five seconds.
“In a perfect world, they would never call me,” said Col. Chuck Davis, who commands the military-civilian aviation partnership from the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise.
According to the NIFC’s National Significant Wildland Fire Potential Outlook, most of the country is listed at “normal” wildfire danger in the monthly update issued Thursday. However, California, southern New Mexico and Arizona, and southern Alaska are listed at “above-normal” risk for May. Much of the south, including Arkansas and Tennessee, are listed at below-normal risk. Fire forecasters say the wet spring across much of the Midwest and East has kept a lid on fires.
About 2,000 fewer fires than usual have burned so far in 2014, and those fires have burned fewer acres than usual, said Robyn Broyles, a NIFC spokeswoman. The United States has seen about 18,000 wildfires across the country, many of them in drought-stricken California.
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