On that day

Erickson brought to Australia a sixth and spare Air Crane late last year (see Rotor Torque xxx) which the SAU had acquired to bolster its complement of two Air Cranes already on contract. “We had three Air Cranes on the day with up to four at the height of the fires.” “If the shit kept hitting the fan the host states, NSW and South Australia, didn’t require theirs, we could have requested them.”

In their base contracted fleet SAUV had 32 tactical aircraft at the ready for fire attack comprising a mixture of xxx, Air Tractor, Air Cranes, Bell 212, 205 and 214B, Sikorsky S-61 and BK 117s.

“The 32 aircraft are on a 15 minute standby right throughout the fire season which is slightly different to other states as they have a lesser pool of readily available machines and have more ‘call when needed’ machines.”

“We had increased our base fleet by bringing in an additional Air Crane and a Bell 214B from NSW and some other machinery that was available in Victoria. In total we had about 53 aircraft on standby on the day across the state which included recognisance and command type aircraft.”

Defence Assistance

Post the fires the RAAF offered an Orion fitted with sophisticated infra red sensors and photography equipment to help with an impact assessment. “By the Monday when things had settled down a bit and people were really trying to realise what we had happened,” explained Rees. “The RAAF assisted with what a rapid impact assessment. The Orion took high and low level photography which was fed back to the impact assessment team, a whole of government unit consisting of the police, fire authorities, department of human services and other aid agencies, that were all trying to find out what impact the fires had. So the RAAF Orion helped provide imagery for that because it was outside what the fire agencies needed for the fire fight – we had that covered with our own infra red equipment – this was about using imagery to find out how many houses did get burnt.”

Post-fires Navy detached two of A109E Powers from its Nowra based A109 Flight to support the ADF’s Operation Vic Fire Assist with flying fire recovery teams and department heads to inspect the devastation. “Using the Powers meant we didn’t have to take fire fighting assets away for the recovery tasks,” said Rees. The A109 detachment operated from Essendon Airport and also carried out light logistics tasks and personnel movements in aid of ongoing efforts at assessing and planning for rebuilding post fires.

“A lot of the major areas were burnt during the night. The fire began early afternoon and went through the King Lake area by late afternoon. There were two fires which combined which tore through Marrysville where the majority of deaths occurred during the evening of February 7.

“Even the infra red line scan aircraft couldn’t do detection flights over those fires because the were massive pyro cumulus (cloud) heads on the fires which meant they couldn’t get anywhere near them. So it really wasn’t until the next day (Sunday February 8) from an aircraft perspective we couldn’t fly because the cloud came in and the smoke was so thick that we couldn’t get into a lot of areas to find out what had happened. We were getting a lot of reports but the roads we blocked. Police were only starting to get into the areas at dawn on Sunday. As you would expect a few media helicopters got in to areas where other people couldn’t and got some pretty amazing shots. But it wasn’t to middle to late Sunday that the true depth of what happened really became apparent.”

“We had two Air Cranes activated on a fire at Bunyip which stared from lightening earlier in the week from dawn on Black Saturday.

Called the Killmore East – Murrindindi complex fire.

The fire began in the Killmore East district approximately 90km north of Melbourne and burnt down in a south-easterly direction pushed a long by very, very strong north-westerly winds through the Mount Disappointment Forest and on to King Lake. Further to the north of King Lake a second fire had stared near Yea burning through toward Murindindi and Glenburn on a virtual parallel track to the Killmore East fire. By late in the afternoon a changed in wind direction from the south turned the path of the Killmore East fire north-east to join up with the parallel fire around Buxton. Consolidated the fire then carried on into Marrysville where the majority of deaths occurred during the evening of February 7. It kept burning through to Eelsville and the Yarra Valley.

On the same day disastrous and fatal fires were also burning to the west of Melbourne at Bendigo and Horseham, north at Beechworth and in south east in the Latrobe Valley. To make matters worse a lightening storm passed through parts of the state on late the following afternoon which started fires in The Grampians and north of the Latrobe Valley. “They didn’t do much but the point being they distracted us a fair bit,” said Rees. “Lightening also started a fire on Wilson’s Promontory at the southern tip of the state in inaccessible areas. “We could not do anything about it, we just had to let burn. We didn’t have the resources or the man power and we just had to let it go and over two weeks it pretty much burnt out the entire national park. By the time we had detected it and got resources down there is was burning in conditions that would have killed people had we put anyone in to fight it.”

“There were a lot of fires that day, some were suspected arson.” On Black Saturday Rees was flying as an air attack supervisor for one of the Erickson Air Cranes. “Later in the day we got pulled in to a fire that was threatening a fire at Narrewarren which is literally in the suburbs of Melbourne.”

“I have been in fire bombing and aviation for 25 years, and I was in Sydney in 1994 when it went up which was pretty bad, but was nothing like this!”

The total area affected by the fires was in excess of 400,000 square kilometres.

In Victoria the State Air Desk receives request from individual incident controllers at a fire for aerial resources. On a priority basis aircraft are deployed and are controlled by the incident controller to attack the fire. Weather forecasts are used to determine fire threats and aircraft are prepositioned around the state to protect life and property. “On the day we had concentrated most of our resources closer to the major population areas because that’s where we all deemed were a threat.”

“We had a sufficient number of resources we believe for that day. The day before we put out a warning to all the incident controllers across the state saying the predicted winds were going to be such that we doubted that at some stage during the day whether we were going to fly. The prediction was for winds way above the thresholds for starts for a lot of the aircraft. For example the Erisckson Air Cranes have a 40kt limit on starting. “We were warning people ‘don’t rely on aircraft on this day because they may not be able to be there’”.

“On the day of all we could do was asset protection – that’s all you could do. There was no way you could get anywhere near the heads of these fires. And this continued through into the Sunday. Conditions did abate on Sunday and a couple of fires were brought under control but the big one (Killmore East – Murindindi fire) the head of it was already into quite remote country north of Healsville that we couldn’t get to so were back to try mopping up flanks and protecting life and property.

We had a reasonable December rainfall which meant a lot of dams had good quantities of water. Most of the aircraft had no problems finding water on the day. Because of where the fires were, on private property interface type areas, the helicopters could get to quickly water sources quickly resulting in reasonably short turn arounds.

First thing on the Sunday morning aircraft were unable to get airborne as the low cloud and thick hanging smoke restricted the visibility.

We don’t have a mosquito fleet of Squirrels or JetRangers with buckets – we don’t use them at all for bucketing. In Victoria our philosophy is we need bombing and we so we bring in aircraft that are heavy. Our smallest helicopter is a BK 117 with a belly tank – everything else is bigger. Dromaders and Air Tractors for fixed wings and Bell 212, 205 and bigger for helicopters. We want Squirrels and JetRangers as our tactical platforms flying our air attack commanders or observers up in those providing overall coordination and integration into the ground plan.

“On that day a JetRanger with a bucket would have had absolutely no use what so ever. The 212s were struggling, so were the Cranes, due to the winds, turbulence, the heat. You just couldn’t get in close enough to targets because the winds were quite incredible. We consider JetRangers and Squirrels as initial attack machines and I can count on one hand how many times we’ve used them with a bucket. Once you get into bombing we want big machines that have good capacity that will stay bombing … and use the type 3 helicopters for reconnaissance and air attack commanding platforms.”

PZL Dromader 2500lts and Airtractor 802 carries 3,200lts.

On two of the fires we had to stand the aircraft down due to the winds.

In Victoria we tend to use a lot of chemical retardants which we tend to use the fixed wing aircraft for in more remote country. We tend to use helicopters in the urban interface for asset protection and for inserting repel crews.

“Where and when they started on Black Saturday they were gone way past initial attack literally in the first ten to fifteen minutes.”

Six type 1 helicopters (3 x Erickson Air Cranes; 2 x Sikorsky S-61s; 1 x Bell 214B), six type 2 helicopters (4 x Bell 212; 1 x Bell 205; 1 x BK 117), 12 x SEATS (4 x AT802s; 8 x PZL Dromader), 11 x type 3 helicopters (mix of Bell 206B, Bell 206L and AS 350s) and 18 x fixed wing recognisance aircraft (Cessna 337; GA8; Cessna 172/182/210; Partenavia). Immediately after Black Saturday additional aircraft were obtained including SEATS, Mil Mi-8MTV1 Bell 212’s and additional type 3 helicopters.

“It was spotting (throwing spot fires) way ahead of itself. The fire we were on it was spotting six or seven kilometres and that was in the first hour … that’s abnormal on any day.”

“It was just a shocking day”

“We did have another run of fires stared later in the month up around Dalesford. And because of the heightened urgency there were towns already starting to evacuate in places where the Killmore fire could still of run because it was still uncontrolled.”

The immediate threat started to easing on the Monday and Tuesday but the problem was there were still huge amounts of area that were untracked that had running fire that was threatening.”

At each incident and mobile helibase was established. Up to five helibases we active on Black Saturday reaching up to seven during the height of the following week. “A helibase was set up at Killmore when the fire started. As the fire moved east the helibase relocated to Wesburn and then continued to move with the fire after that.”

We brought in a Mil Mi-8 from New Zealand because we wanted long line capacity. We had long line buckets under the S-61s but we also wanted more.”

Advantages of long line buckets
“Some of the areas of the fire, especially the Killmore East where it got into catchment areas, at times you can’t get into stepper gullys with a snorkel and tank helicopter. Some of the water sources for tanked helicopters were a long haul out, even further for the fixed wings, where as the bucket machines could fill out of creeks that were a lot closer in. It was all about reducing the turn around and applicability. We wanted to be able to drop chemical retardant into remote areas that was not suitable for fixed wings and the tanked helicopters in Victoria can’t drop retardants because of corrosion related issue so we need a helicopter with a bucket to do that.

Our fleet is varied – horses for courses – in some situations tanks are better than buckets and in others buckets are better than tanks.”

In Victoria the use of xxx retardant is not approved for fixed tank helicopters. The Rural Fire Service in NSW trialled a different type of retardant in their contracted Air Crane with which is approved for tanks, but the SAUV has yet to trial it. ”We run chemical retardants in our fixed wing bombers and from buckets if need be and run water or foam out of our other tanked helicopters. Using foam pretvent water from evaporationg so quickly especially in extreme temperatures.

“You can’t just drop water from fixed wings for example, you have got to tie the load together to keep it in one concentrated area. ”We use foam out of the helicopters as it give a smothering and blanketing effect. The concentration is not much more than what you put in your sink for dishwashing but it does enable the load to hold together a bit better. Depending on the conditions foam can give you up to five minutes of blanketing before it evaporates”

The number of helicopters flying in the area of a fire depended on how a fire is resourced. “The fire we were on at Bunyip had two Air Cranes, two 212s and they were being controlled by two air attack supervisors. You maintain separation, talk to each other and the air attack supervisors keeps an overview of what is going on.

“On the Killmore fire initially there were the two S-61s, an Air Crane, a 214B and two 212s with about three air attack supervisors.

“You designate where your targets and filling points are. We don’t control the pilots but the object is to get a pattern going so you have got one on the fire and one at the filling point at the same time. We do work pretty closely with the pilots of the bombing aircraft warning them of threats like wires are. And that’s why we want our air attack supervisors to be above the scene albeit on that day not very high above because of the conditions.

Fighting the Killmore East fire one of the Bell 212s caught its snorkel, attached to the belly tank, on a wire. Fortunately the wire broke causing the snorkel to ricochet up and strike the tail boom. The helicopter was able to fly back to its base but was later determined by engineers that the tail boom would need to be replaced. “The pilot later said the wire was about 150 feet above the ground. This was the only significant incident and considering the conditions we were operating in and the amount of flying we did, we were very lucky or very fortunate – there was a lot of luck that day.”

“Any fire bombing operation in an urban interface then there is likely to be a lot of wires and not all of them are marked on a map so it was like working in a high-wire environment like one operator said. ”It’s everyone’s job to keep an eye out for wires and you talk often to tell everyone what you have seen”.

“On the subsequent days after Black Saturday the biggest problem were a number of aircraft were up over the fires taking a look and working for insurance companies that didn’t necessarily know about fighting fires. We even found out days later that someone whose house was under threat had hired a helicopter themselves to go and have a look on the Black Saturday. Things were evolving so rapidly on the day we didn’t get to put out fire NOTAMS. The Air Desk didn’t give Incident specific fire NOTAMs a though as there were so many other things happening. There were a number of aircraft that seemed to have no awareness of the fire aircraft.

The Victoria police established exclusion zones around several towns where deaths had occurred because they were effectively a crime scene which prevented aircraft flying over or above these areas excluding fire aircraft. “We had specific NOATMS around the other areas saying ‘please don’t go there and if you do contact the Air Desk and use this frequency so we know you’re there’”. In some situations it’s proof that people just don’t read NOTAMS.

A classification system for helicopters is used to categorise their maximum gross weight and fire bombing capacities. Type 1 are the heavy lifters like the Air Cranes, S-61 and Mi-8; type 2 are medium lift Bell 212, 214, 205s and have a call sign prefix of ‘Helitack’. The suffix of the call sign starts with the postcode of the state. In Victoria all the call sign suffixes will start with three. Type 3 helicopters are light helicopters such as Bell JetRangers, LongRangers and Eurocopter Squirrels. “The BK 117 is a fence sitter because its fire bombing capacity puts it into type 2 where as its maximum gross weight puts it into type 3. It was the same with the A119 Koala being used last year in South Australia. But because Victoria and NSW tend to use the BK as a bomber we agreed to class it and the Koala as a ‘Helitack’ or type 2.”

Fixed wing aircraft such as the Dromader and Air Tractors are call signed ‘bomber’ with single engine recognisance aircraft like Cessna 182 are called ‘Fire spotter’. Twin engined recognisance aircraft (Cessna 337s) are called Bird Dog. All call sign numbers are registered against the aircraft’s VH registrations.

Flying in this fire environment required a lot of patience, understanding what the fire authorities are trying to achieve and an full understanding of fire and it’s behaviour,” described Doug Abbot. You have to be vigilant of all that’s going on around you, keeping a look out for and communicating with multiple helicopters at a fire, keep an eye out for anomalies such as spot over’s that the AAS (Aerial Attack Supervisor) has not seen, be able to alter targets in a confined area often with a full load of water/retardant in high wind conditions, low visibility and difficult terrain.”

Dropping the load accurately on the target takes into consideration wind drift, terrain and other machines so that once the load has been dropped the turn to the refill point will miss the possible conflicting traffic.

Smoke took its toll on crew as naturally it becomes harder to breath. It gets into the cockpit and if it was thick enough would stings the eyes, requires increased attention levels as it’s more difficult to define the target and the thicker the smoke more attention needs to be given to engine monitoring as lower oxygen levels make the engines run hotter. And of course the ever present danger of losing visual reference.

Finding water sources close to the fire is a priority and that’s where our bucket came into it’s own with the Powerfill pumps. We could fill from sources as shallow as 18″ provided there is a continuous flow of water and allied to the fact that the bucket is attached to a 100′ long line we usually find something fairly close. However, in the really dry areas it still sometimes ends up with a ferry of 6nm or more between fire and water source.

Keeping that old saying there are old pilots and bold pilots ………………. etc in mind pays ‘cos this environment does not need “heroes”, it just needs good, skilled pilots.