For the first time in its history, CAL FIRE is flying night-time air attacks with its own crew and equipment, thanks to its new Sikorsky S-70i FIREHAWK helicopters.
SACRAMENTO COUNTY, Calif. — Until this wildfire season, all the air attacks CAL FIRE has launched with its own planes and helicopters have been limited to daylight hours only.
A new fleet of Sikorsky S-70i FIREHAWK helicopters is changing that for California’s statewide firefighting department, allowing CAL FIRE to douse flames in the dark.
Design with Ease
At CAL FIRE’s Aviation Management Unit at McClellan Park in Sacramento County, ABC10 met up with CAL FIRE’s Helicopter Program Manager and Chief Helicopter Pilot Ben Berman, who gave us a tour of the new CAL FIRE HAWKS.
“It’s the Jeep Wrangler of the sky,” Berman said with a smile.
CAL FIRE has nine of the HAWKS now, with three more being built and money for four additional ones approved in this year’s state budget, at $25 million each.
“This utilizes lasering gyros for our attitude indicators,” Berman said, standing beside one of the CAL FIRE HAWKS. “It’s definitely state-of-the-art.”
The fleet will eventually be distributed to CAL FIRE bases throughout the state. As they’re brought online, CAL FIRE’s legacy fleet of Bell UH-1H “Huey” helicopters will be retired.
These Hueys, some of them have been around since Vietnam. Some of them have, you know, bullet-hole patches,” Berman said. “They’re truly a workhorse.”
These Hueys have served CAL FIRE well over the decades, Berman said, but these new CAL FIRE HAWKS — designed specifically for firefighting — are a game-changer.
“Because the Hawk is so much faster than the Huey…we can get a little bit further a little bit faster,” Berman said.
Both the Huey and the Hawk are capable of refilling their water tank using a drop-down snorkel while hovering above a body of water. The HAWKS, however, have larger tanks that take less than 30 seconds to refill, Berman said.
“It’s a 1000 gallon tank where the Huey was north of about 300 gallons on a good day,” he said.
That’s just one of the many ways this machine helps CAL FIRE better attack California’s wildfires.
Hueys are single-engine whereas HAWKS are dual-engine.
“So if we were in an extreme circumstance, we can drop the water and be able to fly out single-engine and be able to save the aircraft and crew,” Berman explained. “(The Huey is) a single engine helicopter and a lot of our mountainous terrain does not give us that its own forgiving if we lose an engine.”
