MOBILE, Ala. - Two Alabama Army National Guard helicopters departed for California yesterday to assist in combating wild fires in the state.
Chief Warrant Officers 4 Albert J. Houser and Randy Kirkland are pilots of a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter that is based in Mobile. Flying a CH-47 Chinook helicopter from its Birmingham base are CWO 5 Jon Warren and CWO 4 David Lord.
Ten other maintenance and flight crew personnel accompanied the pilots on the two aircraft. After an overnight stop last night, the two Alabama choppers will arrive in California with their air crews today. The overall mission to include travel time will last for 14 days.
Once in California, the Alabama pilots will merge with air crews from other states to fight the wild fires. The helicopters and crews were dispatched in response to an Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) request from California.
EMAC became law in 1996 after Congress ratified the program and was the first national disaster compact in nearly 60 years.
EMAC allows states to obtain assistance from other states if the requesting state does not have adequate resources and/or equipment to perform needed relief and recovery missions. Alabama and ten other states are currently furnishing National Guard personnel and equipment, mainly helicopters and air crews, to California under EMAC.
The Alabama Army National Guard air crews will use water buckets suspended beneath the helicopters to help extinguish the fires. The UH-60 utilizes a 780-gallon bucket while the larger medium lift CH-47 has a 2,000 gallon bucket.
The pilots will fill the buckets at designated water sources and then transport the water and drop it on a fire. The water buckets are controlled from inside the helicopter and mass drops can be made directly on a single hot spot or spread out along a fire line.
For full effectiveness, the water drops are made from 100 to 150 feet directly over the fire lines. Safety is paramount, so to insure the crews are alert and fresh, they will fly no more than eight hours a day.