We use cookies to enhance your browsing experience, serve personalized ads or content, and analyze our traffic. By clicking "Accept All", you consent to our use of cookies.
Customize Consent Preferences
We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.
The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ...
Always Active
Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.
No cookies to display.
Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.
No cookies to display.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
No cookies to display.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
No cookies to display.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.
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.
1 of 9
Los Angeles city fire helicopter lead pilot Brandon Prince inside one of the helicopters used to make water drops with pinpoint precision on flames in gusty Santa Ana winds during the wildfires. Tuesday, Van Nuys CA. Jan 21, 2025.
(Photo by Gene Blevins, Contributing Photographer)
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.
