747s may be enlisted for firefighting duty
SEATTLE -- Since first taking off in 1969,
The familiar jumbo jets serve the president as Air Force One and piggyback the space shuttle on cross-country flights. The military is even outfitting one with a laser to track and destroy enemy missiles.
Now, federal officials are exploring whether the venerable humpbacked 747 should be called on to perform still another task: putting out really big fires.
Oregon-based Evergreen International Aviation has spent an estimated $10 million to convert one of its 747s into a large airborne water tank. Using a system of nozzles under the plane's belly, the craft can spray a stream of water or chemical retardant up to 5 miles long.
''This plane can create its own rainstorm," said Penn Stohr, director of flight operations for the aviation services company, which in March and April conducted demonstrations for federal and state firefighting officials in the Arizona desert. ''It could be a major tool for fighting wildfires."
Company officials say the aerial supertanker has other possible uses, including dispersing major oil spills and decontaminating areas hit by biochemical attacks. (A photo simulation on the company's website depicts four of the supertankers spraying decontaminants over midtown Manhattan.)
But no matter how the converted 747s might be used they would not come cheap -- costing about $20,000 an hour or more to operate, some federal officials estimate. That is one reason, they say, that firefighting and Homeland Security officials have not raced to sign contracts with the company.
Another consideration is whether the large planes could fly low and slow enough to be used effectively against the kinds of fires that have raged across the West in recent years -- charring 60 million acres in the past decade, or an area the size of Oregon, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, based in Boise, Idaho.
Visionary or crackpot, the idea of using the plane has generated interest within the firefighting world. And Evergreen's bid was made at a time federal agencies are reviewing their aerial firefighting strategies, with an eye toward modernizing the planes they use.
In May, the US Forest Service grounded the 33 largest tankers in its fleet -- some were former military craft built in the late 1940s -- citing safety concerns. Two of the planes crashed in 2002 when their wings fell off because of metal fatigue; five crew members were killed. After safety checks, officials rescinded the grounding of 11 planes, nine of which were former Navy P-3 Orions capable of holding about 3,000 gallons of water or chemical retardant.
Those planes are used in coordination with state fleets, such as the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection's 23 air tankers -- S-2T turboprop planes, which can hold about 1,200 gallons each.
Evergreen's 747 can hold as many as 24,000 gallons, a major selling point in the eyes of its proponents, including Representative Rick Renzi, Republican of Arizona, a member of the House Resources Committee. He said the jumbo tanker represented ''the most advanced firefighting technology in the world today."
