Oregon currently has more than nine active wildfires right now. We have been going to watch the firefighting planes at the U.S. Forest Service Air Tanker base when we are in town. The big one on the right is number 60 from Butler Aviation - our local fire fighting aviation service. It is a DC-7 retardant tanker but it hasn't been flying as much as usual since there is a shortage of retardant due to so many fires.
These two Convair CV580's are from Conair Aviation in Abbotsford British Columbia.
This is tanker number 07 - a Lockheed P2-V. It is based out of Missoula, Montana from Neptune Aviation.
This is one of two Canadair CL-215 Scoopers that are used to drop water. They came all the way from Minnesota - Department of Natural Resources.
The pictures above were taken last night at dusk just minutes apart. This fire is just a few miles from the summit of Mt. Jefferson in the Cascade mountains. The second photo shows a sudden blow up of the fire. We got up this morning to find that it has doubled in size. We are so grateful to have the firefighting planes based here. We wish safe flights to all of them...
Neptune Aviation 11 was here last August. It crashed June 2012 in Utah. Both pilots perished.
3 comments:
My prayers also go out to those brave pilots, also to anyone whose homes and lives are in danger..
That must be extremely costly to fight those fires. How neat, though, to see those planes!!
My nephew is a firefighter and is off on a fire right now. What would we do without the brave men and women who do that for us? ((hugs)), Teresa :-)
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