Warbird Information Exchange

B.C. water bomber leaves for California fires

Sandra McCulloch
CanWest News Service; Victoria Times Colonist


Wednesday, October 24, 2007


VICTORIA - A Martin Mars water bomber was expected to leave B.C. at dawn today for San Diego, where weary U.S. crews are battling wildfires that so far have burned more than 750 homes and forced the evacuation of more than half a million residents.

The water bomber's owner, Wayne Coulson, flew with 10 employees to San Diego on Tuesday and will meet up with the aircraft as it arrives.

"We're really grateful to have it here," said Maurice Luque, spokesman of the San Diego fire department.

The fires, fuelled by drought and fanned by the dry Santa Ana winds, are not contained but the winds lessened somewhat on Tuesday.

"It would have been so wonderful to have had the Mars here a day or so ago when the fire first broke out," said Luque, adding that resources, personnel and equipment have been sent from Northern California to help out.

The fires could be larger than the ones that devastated the San Diego region in 2003, said Luque: "We thought we saw the last of fires of that magnitude but we definitely have that here."

Coulson Group had been anticipating a call for the water bomber and plans were in place to send it south.

"I've been down with San Diego fire department four times in the last five weeks working ... on placing the Mars down there for the Santa Anas," said Coulson on Tuesday. "We're ahead of the game, we've flown into a bunch of the water reservoirs down there so we have a sense of where we're going to go."

A tractor-trailer used for specialized maintenance and a fuel truck left for San Diego Monday.

This isn't the first time a Coulson-owned aircraft has fought wildfires in Southern California. A firefighting helicopter worked in the Los Angeles basin for five years.

"It's a natural fit for us," said Coulson. "We know everybody, we know what we're going into and everyone knows us. We're pretty pleased."

The water bomber will likely be put to work covering homes and structures with a protective covering called Thermo-Gel, which consists of 98 per cent water and a super-absorbent polymer. Fighting the fires right now is just too difficult, said Coulson.

"There's not a hell of a lot you can do with a 60-mph wind and fire coming at you other than just gelling homes to protect as many as you can," he said.

Victoria Times Colonist

© CanWest News Service 2007

Wow. I'm surprised the Mars is able to come south of the border. The USFS decision that grounded all of the other vintage bombers also had a clause that effectively prevented any of the Canadian bombers from coming south as well. I hope this means someone found a way around the rules and maybe we can get the Mars and some of the Conair Convairs down here to help out.

There's always inspectors and regulatory representatives that don't really know much about the non-mainstream segments of the industries.

Yeah, that sounds like some of the FAA Reps I've run into over the years. Try to talk to them about any airplane that isn't seen 50 times a day (or more) at any major airport and you have to first explain what the airplane looks like, what it can do, and answer 20 other questions before you can actually get to what you want to talk about.

It's a problem with a lot of industries though. There's always inspectors and regulatory representatives that don't really know much about the non-mainstream segments of the industries.