Dan Child and a copilot were coordinating aerial efforts to attack the Palisades fire the night of Jan. 7 when the winds became so strong they were struggling just to maintain altitude.
The two pilots realized they were losing 1,500 feet per minute in the nighttime sky and were continuing to get pushed down. The winds were too strong, it was time to call off air support until they subsided. An uncommon windstorm grounding a fleet of helicopters as they tried to extinguish flames to protect homes.
The decision, Child said, was “super difficult…probably one of the harder things I had (to do).”
“We as firemen want to solve the problem and put the fire out,” said Child, chief pilot with the Los Angeles Fire Department’s Air Operations Division. “But the (Federal Aviation Administration) looks at it like, that is a super hazardous attitude and one that gets people in a lot of trouble and accidents. From an aviation standpoint, that’s where you have to start separating it.”
By that point, helicopter pilots had been dropping water on the flames for about nine hours, but were fighting a tough battle against the winds, which spread the fire at an alarming rate, officials said.
The fire eventually grew to 23,448 acres, and by Wednesday had claimed 11 lives while destroying or damaging more than 7,000 structures, according to the latest Cal Fire numbers.
Wind speeds factor in when deciding whether to ground aircraft. For the LAFD, the limitations are usually 40 knots (about 46 mph) with a 20-knot (about 23 mph) gust spread, said Brandon Prince, an LAFD lead pilot. The gust spread is the difference between sustained winds and peak wind gusts.
Near the time the decision was made to ground the helicopters, a wind reading at a nearby water station recorded 66 mph winds with 89 mph gusts. Child still had the screenshot on his phone while speaking at the Air Operations Division’s Van Nuys Airport base Tuesday.
The following morning, the winds decreased enough to allow air support units back into the skies. LAFD’s helicopter pilots were ready to go.
Using five medium-sized twin-engine helicopters, pilots, including Prince, battled heavy winds, while hovering 50 to 100 feet over steep terrain to drop thousands of gallons of water at pinpoint locations to extinguish columns of fire.
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They worked in four hour shifts, with eight hours in between to recuperate. LAFD hires its pilots from within after hundreds of hours of training. All of them start as ground firefighters, creating and strengthening a culture of teamwork between air and ground units.
Prince, a 10-year veteran of the Air Operations Division, said Child’s decision to ground aircraft until morning was the right one.
“There’s a time when you’re not getting effective,” Prince said. “When you can be flat pitch, on the ground at idle, getting fuel and the wind is so strong that it’s starting to lift up the helicopter, you’re no longer flying that helicopter. You’re no longer in control.”
Hopping in the pilot’s seat of the Leonardo AW139, Prince and his fellow pilots would fly to a nearby water station to fill a tank that can hold upwards of 5,000 gallons. Listening to as many as six radios at once, positioned among some hundreds of buttons in between the two front seats of the helicopter, Prince is told which part of the fire to attack.
Not to mention the helicopter is operating at maximum gross weight, making it more difficult to maneuver. As the helicopter burns fuel, it can hold more water, but the difference between an empty water tank and one filled to maximum weight, Prince said, is like going from the power of a Porsche to a Honda Civic.
While en route to the drop spot, he’s calculating. What are the winds doing? What weather patterns is the fire creating? What kind of drop am I doing? Where does the helicopter need to be? Was the previous pilot’s drop successful and what did they do? How am I going to fly out after the drop?
The type of fuels can also dictate the type of drop, Child said. Pilots will fly faster and spread out water over a grass fire, while slowing down for a more concentrated drop on heavier brush.
And there’s the turbulence or the constantly changing conditions between each drop.
While flying, Prince uses a dry erase marker on his window to mark where each of the other pilots are in sequence, or whether one of the five helicopters is grounded for a period of time.
As for the radios, Child said pilots, including himself, listen to keywords, most notably their names, to handle the influx of communications coming in. The six radios connect pilots to supervisors, other pilots and ground units, who can dictate which areas of the fire need the most attention.
Once he gets the helicopter in position, Prince hits a button on the control stick, opening up two or three doors to the water tank, depending on the type of drop.
“You’re doing a lot, especially in those 30 seconds of when you’re going in to actually make the drop,” Prince said. “Then after that, you’re trying to assess the drop. Was I too fast? Was I too slow? Did I release it a second early, second late? Did I offset enough for the wind?”
Immediately after the drop, a supervisor above offers feedback to each pilot, letting them know whether the drop was successful, or informing them of what changes they need to make next time. Sometimes that means being two or three rotors over to account for the wind.
A miss is frustrating, Child and Prince said, and the consequence could be the further spread of fire before the next pilot arrives, not to mention the fuel and time it takes to refill and return.
“It’s a wasted drop, so now you’ve just wasted time,” Prince said. “One of the worst feelings is with the ground crews. These guys are down there on the ground, scratching lines and trying to flank this fire and put it out. We’re just knocking it down for them, enough that they can manage it.”
But coordination is also key. While Prince and other pilots are working in a circle from the filling station to the assigned drop location, another set of pilots sits in a helicopter about 500 feet above monitoring and providing immediate feedback on each water drop. Helicopters are kept separate from fixed-wing aircraft, which work on a separate portion of the fire, the pilots said.
That feedback is crucial, he said, because it allows him to adjust for the next one if needed.
Many of the direct hits during aerial attack of the Palisades, Eaton, Kenneth and Hurst fires, were caught on news helicopter cameras and shared on social media, with many praising the precision of the pilots.
Child said it is nice to see the positive feedback.
“I know it’s not an easy maneuver to make sure your water hits a target,” Child said. “So it’s always impressive to see the professionalism, which these guys are constantly working on because it’s not something you can just go out and do.
“It’s always nice to see water make it’s target,” he continued, “because I know the challenges everyone is playing with.”
