Erickson Air Crane / Kings Canyon Wildfire Aug 9, 2015 from Brandon Setter on Vimeo.
This is a professional quality video of an Erickson Air-Crane drafting water and dropping on the Rough Fire on the Sierra National Forest in California.
The Rough fire has burned about 5,200 acres two miles southwest of Spanish Mountain, 45 air miles east of Fresno, California.
The southwest portion of the fire can be viewed on the Buck Rock web cam.
Wednesday additional overhead from a National Incident Management Organization (NIMO) team will join the Sierra National Forest’s Type 3 organization in managing the fire.
A Request
While this is a very good video, I have a request for everyone who shoots footage of aircraft dropping on a fire. After the liquid is released from the aircraft, stop panning and show us where the water or retardant lands. The air tanker or helicopter exiting the drop area is often, but not always, the least visually interesting part of the process.
And if it is a water drop, which is often DIRECTLY on an actively burning flank of the fire (as opposed to a retardant drop that is usually offset from the flames), linger for 5 or 10 or more seconds so that we can see the effects of the drop. Do the flames diminish, or not? Is smoke replaced with steam? Some of the veteran camera operators for the TV stations in southern California do this.
Am I the only one that wants to know if the drop was, 1) on target, and 2) effective?
As the creator of the video I thank you for reposting it! And glad it was inspiring enough to share it! Go figure that I miss-spelled a word (my gift is shooting and editing not spelling, haha) – I threw this video together in an afternoon and did have people proof it but I guess we all missed that one… I made it just for fun because I thought these guys were awesome out there flying and to pay tribute to them as they had already been flying daily for a week straight!!!! (It wasn’t a project for hire or pro project at all – but I did try to make it look as pro as possible since I do video professionally and have high value for pro quality work.) This video was also not intended to be a scientific look at firefighting or operations – just simply a cool edit of these guys in action. As the editor I felt holding on that water drop shot too long would have made the fast paced and exciting edit kinda boring and awkward for my taste. But I can see how one would want to see that shot in full… I do have that shot extended out much longer if you want to email me I can send it to you. Thanks again for sharing it!
Thanks for your good work of filming and editing the piece!
Love your blog by the way! Just spent the last 15 mins reading posts and watching videos! Way cool.
Thanks Brandon.
Thanks for posting this Bill. I don’t see it as being at all critical to want to sometimes see the results of retardant/water drops in videos/pictures.
And when you add captions to a video, get someone to copyedit them. Lightning, for example, does not have an e in it.
😉
Classic.
Haha doh…. go figure I miss spelled one word… I even had people proof it but I guess we all missed it. Oh well…. You’re the first person in all 11.2k views to point it out. I’m impressed. When time allows I’ll fix it and reupload to vimeo.