July 7, 2009
Music/Announcer: This is a podcast from the U.S. Department of the Interior
Ron Tull: The Department of the Interior and the US Forest Service have a new partner in assessing the safety and suitability of firefighting aircraft. They recently teamed up with NASA to consider use of the V-LAT which stands for very large air tanker. How large? Interior Aviation Manager Mark Bathrick explains.
Mark Bathrick, NBC Aviation Manager: “It’s based on the commercial 747 and DC-10 right now, that class of aircraft. At take-off gross weights in excess of 255,000 pounds and fire retardant carriage capacities in excess of 11,000 gallons the VLAT represents and entirely new class of air tanker and a capability that complements the current suite of authorized aerial firefighting aircraft available to managers.”
Ron Tull: The recommendations from NASA’s scientific approach resulted in a first-of-its-kind joint authorization letter between the Department of the Interior and the U.S. Forest Service agreeing on how the new class of aircraft will be used and giving fire managers on the ground more authority to employ the aircraft.
Mark Bathrick, NBC Aviation Manager: “This approach examines all of those characteristics of the aircraft in a mission context, in this case wildland firefighting mission. And that’s an approach that previously the Department and U.S. Forest Service have not employed. Of course NASA engineers and flight test pilots are world renowned so we feel very confidant and comfortable with their analysis and that’s why we’re able to provide an authorization letter for managers that gives them some authority to risk manage the operations and the employment of this aircraft within certain operational boundaries that we defined in the authorization letter.”
Ron Tull: Bathrick points out that fires are fought and put out by forces on the ground, but air assets complement the effort.
Mark Bathrick, NBC Aviation Manager: “It takes a combined effort from the air and on the ground to combat these wildland fires. Certainly the ground personnel, the fire engines on the ground and the folks on the scene with pulaskis are complemented by the range of aerial firefighting tools that are available. Increasingly aerial firefighting assets are in demand by ground incident commanders. They have certainly a lot of flexibility and capability to get in to a fire quickly and assist in controlling the fire. So we’re very excited to be able to give incident commanders and fire managers this new and capable tool.”
Ron Tull: So far it’s been a slow fire season in west, according to the latest reports from the National Interagency Fire Center in Idaho a new record as been set for remaining at National Preparedness Level ONE. They’ve been there since October of last year.
This has been a podcast from the U.S. Department of the Interior; I’m Ron Tull, Washington