Douglas County nears deal for SuperTanker
Converted 747 can drop 20,000 gallons on wildfires
Douglas County may soon be pulling out the big guns on the upcoming wildfire season — or more specifically, a giant 19,200gallon water gun that moves at 600 mph.
The county commissioners on Tuesday are scheduled to vote on a contract with Global SuperTanker Services LLC that would make available a behemoth air tanker — a converted Boeing 747-400 based in Colorado Springs — to help battle blazes in the county south of Denver.
The deal would be the first Global SuperTanker signs in the United States, giving Douglas County the right to boast the exclusive protection of the largest air tanker in the world.
“This is all about us being better prepared,” said Tim Johnson, director of emergency management for Douglas County. “It’s part of our hard, heavy, fast approach to fighting wildfires.”
Johnson said the $200,000 annual contract with Global SuperTanker, which gets paid out only if and when the plane is called into service, is part of a multipronged strategy the county is taking to make sure it has plenty of capability to put out fires from the air.
Douglas County has firefighting contracts with Castle Rockbased Rampart Helicopter Service, Broomfield-based HeliQwest, Loveland-based Trans Aero Ltd., and 10 Tanker Air Carrier, which uses DC-10s carrying more than 11,000-gallons capacity on board. It also has access to state and federal firefighting air resources.
“We need redundancies in our abilities during fire season because the resources may not always be available — we want to be able to go down a list,” Johnson said. “We’re leaning forward in terms of preparedness.”
Already this year, authorities in Douglas County have had to battle the 40-acre Turkey Track 7 fire 9 miles north of Woodland Park.
In April, Colorado officials predicted an average or better wildfire season for 2017. An average year in Colorado sees 4,500 fires, or 100,000 acres of state-owned or private property burned. About a third of Douglas County is encompassed by the Pike National Forest, where the Turkey Track 7 fire burned last month.
While there has been a surfeit of moisture in Colorado of late, “June is the telltale sign of whether we get a bad fire season,” said Vince Welbaum, aviation unit chief for the state’s Division of Fire Prevention and Control.
He commended Douglas County for being the first to try an arrangement with Global SuperTanker and said the state is piecing together a similar deal of its own with the company. The SuperTanker carries nearly twice as much water or fire retardant as the next largest capacity aircraft available — the DC-10.
“I see this as an opportunity to evaluate it,” Welbaum said.
The SuperTanker already proved itself starting late last
year and early this year, fighting wildfires in Israel and Chile, said Bob Soelberg, the company’s senior vice president and program manager.
It ran 43 sorties over a three-week period in Chile earlier this year, battling fires in the South American country. It uses a crew of about a dozen people when operating overseas.
“There is no one else who has a 747 water bomber,” Soelberg said.
The company’s converted 747-400 was first unveiled at the Colorado Springs Airport in 2016 but had to work through several steps to get an interim license from the Interagency Airtanker Board to operate domestically. It claims it can respond to wildfires anywhere in the Western U.S. within three hours.
Asked whether nearly 20,000 gallons of water or retardant for a wildfire is overkill, Soelberg said it might be worth talking to wildfire victims who lost homes and property — like in the Black Forest fire of 2013 and the Waldo Canyon fire of 2012 — to a blaze that some say didn’t face aggressive enough countermeasures in the early going.
“If your house catches on fire, do you call the fire department and ask them to send the smallest and slowest firetruck?” he said.
That said, financial constraints will limit which and how many counties can get in on the action, Johnson said. Global SuperTanker Services wouldn’t disclose its fees.
“I’m not going to call on a 747 for a 10-acre fire,” Johnson said.
What may prove even more of a block to using the SuperTanker is its availability, given that there is only one and it can operate anywhere in the world. Douglas County’s contract with the company is a “call as needed” arrangement, meaning if the plane has already been dispatched somewhere else, it won’t get used in Douglas County.