Above: Tanker 62 in Madras, OR.
Todd McKinley shot these photos June 29 at various locations in Oregon. Thanks Todd!
Oregon air tankers
Tag: T-66
Firefighting aircraft at the Range Fire in California
We have some excellent photos of aircraft that worked the Range Fire on August 27 six miles east of Arvin, California — thanks to Trey Spooner and the Kern County Fire Department. The fire burned 518 acres and is 100 percent contained.
Kern County’s Helicopter 408, a Bell UH-1H, made 81 water drops at the fire on August 26.
Photos of air tankers on the Goose Fire
Above: Air Tanker 66, a DC-7
These photos were taken by Bob Martinez, a Volunteer in Prevention Photographer with CAL FIRE. They were taken on the Goose Fire near Prather, California, about 18 miles northeast of Fresno. Thanks Bob!
The Goose Fire has burned 2,241 acres and 4 homes and is approaching containment.
Air tankers at Medford
Tim Crippin took these photos on July 31 of air tankers at Medford, Oregon. Thanks Tim!
New paint for Tanker 66
Tim Crippin sent us the photo above of Erickson’s Tanker 66, saying it just returned to Medford, Oregon after getting a new paint job at Phoenix Goodyear Airport.
The photo below is what it looked like a year ago. It is our understanding that Tanker 60 will get the same paint scheme very soon.
The paint is similar to the three Erickson MD-87s:
Air tanker fleet beefed up in California
There is an extremely rare site in the photo above, at least in recent years — two DC-7 air tankers on active duty at an air tanker base in California. CAL FIRE has arranged for them to be on contract so that their 23 S-2T air tankers can rotate in for their annual maintenance. The wildland fire season in the state does not appear to be ending, so they had to do something to provide the needed maintenance for their airborne firefighting fleet while the fire danger remains high.
The state of Oregon routinely uses DC-7 air tankers, but the federal government stopped contracting for them a number of years ago.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Forest Service in recent days has had a couple of P2V air tankers on duty. Yesterday Tanker 910, one of the two DC-10 11,600-gallon air tankers operated by 10 Tanker Air Carrier, was brought over from Albuquerque to be available at Santa Maria, California.
