Disclaimer: I still don't own planes, and I apologize if this chapter is a little bit boring. I had to get everyone where I needed them for the fun stuff. Also this chapter was betaed by thelaterose99. Any mistakes that are left are mine and mine alone.
Chapter 4- The Morning Breaks
The population of the Piston Flats Airstrip had swelled during the night as mutual aid started to arrive. There was of course the big Quint leading his team of wildfire apparatus from the county, but there was also a small fleet of tanker planes from Cal Fire, and right around dawn a dozer crew from Joshua Tree National Park rumbled in.
When Windlifter got moving for the morning, he was incredibly pleased to note that the rehab apparatuses from various units had already set up a hospitality center. It looked like they had roped in one of the water tenders to start filling the big coffee urns with water, which meant the comfortable bitter scent of firehouse coffee would soon be wafting across the camp heralding the switch from night crew to day.
Knowing that it was going to take at least another 15 minutes before the Helo could get a proper cup of Joe, Windlifter decided to visit the first aid station and check up on Cabbie. The Piston Peak Air Attack Team's jump plane eyes were squeezed shut with pain as Windlifter rolled up, but when you considered that he had a fork lift halfway inside his port engine the pain was somewhat to be expected.
The Sky Crane was about to make a comment about possibly increasing Cabbie's pain medication to the medic, but he was already out of the engine and lowering the scissor lift towards the ground. The young looking vehicle had the white and red livery of a Red Cross relief worker.
"We have your filters in stock." The forklift said eyeing Windlifters engines. He set down the piece of Cabbie's engine that he had been fiddling on a tarp and started heading down the tarmac. "Let's get your old ones out."
"Cabbie will you be alright waiting?" The sky crane asked, not wanting to interrupt the injured craft's repair.
The cargo plane snorted. "I am going to have to be. C-119 intake and oil cooling vent filters are not exactly things that everyone keeps on hand. I am going to be grounded until my parts get here."
Windlifter nodded. It made sense, C-119's were no longer common aircraft on the fire flight line, in fact Cabbie was the very last of the make to work on an Air Attack Team, so it would be a waste of space for them waste the space on parts for a rare aircraft when they could use it instead for emergency supplies for aircraft they knew they were going to see on the flight line. Still it didn't seem right to get his filters swapped while Cabbie was left in a holding pattern.
"I decline."
"What?" The Red Cross forklift actually gave Windlifter a double take.
"I decline the filter change." The Skycrane gave his rotors a lazy spin. "I suspect that I will be heading back to my home base this afternoon and would prefer to have a known mechanic complete the task."
"What if you get sent to man the line somewhere else?"
"Then I will reevaluate the situation then." Windlifter said with finality, then nodded towards the Attack Team's Jump plane. "For now, I will not take your attention away from Cabbie's engine repair work. With as bad as this fire has gotten, I suspect we are going to need him back in the air sooner rather than later."
The Skycrane didn't give the forklift a chance to respond. Instead he followed the smell of coffee to the hospitality center. He was able to convince the white and red logistics van to give him two tall, Styrofoam cups of the dark, oil brew. Then he set off to find his still sleeping crewmate.
"Dipper." He nudged a mug of coffee in Dipper's direction as the bush plane blinked some of the exhaustion from her eyes. "Dipper, it is time to attend this morning's safety briefing."
The night helitankers had left about an hour ago, leaving the Blade alone to keep vigil over Dusty's crash site. Well not completely alone. Every once in a while Blade could catch a glimpse of the dark blue belly of the CAP plane circling above him, but she had been getting pretty quiet up there. Blade didn't blame her, 7 hours was a long time to fly in circles.
"Do you hear that?" CAP Two Eight Hotel voice interrupted Blade's thoughts. The Attack Chief closed his eyes and tried to hear what the search craft was listening too. Faintly on the edge of his senses he heard a familiar high pitched scream.
"Jet?"
"I think the Super Tanker has arrived. Give me a moment." Blade could swear that he could hear the fix wing above him grinning. "This location has been prioritized as a drop zone. You are requested to remain on the ground with your rotors are secured, it is about to get pretty windy. I have been requested to fly to Piston Peak Air Attack Base and land. Once the drops are complete then CAP One Niner Foxtrot will take up position as spotter."
"Copy that, Two Eight Hotel." Blade looked upward to see the Cessna above him peel off and head home. "Fair skies."
"Fair skies to you, I hope the next time we meet will be under better circumstances. CAP Two Eight Hotel, Out."
Blade then held his breath and waited for the Very Large Air Tanker, known as a VLAT to arrive. He did not need to wait long. The scream of 4 jet engines echoed across the park as the 747 Supertanker made her approach at a little over 2,000 feet AGL. Even though Blade had only worked one fire with one of these behemoths, he knew that she was only scouting her route. That her next pass was going to be a whole lot closer to the ground.
Moments later she was back. Flaps fully extended and engines dialed giving her just above stall speed (which was admittedly still really bloody fast), the Evergreen Supertanker barreled through the sky under 1000 feet above the earth surface. When she reached the north end of this small protected forest, the VLAT began the drop.
Blade had a lot of time working with big tankers. The Air Attack base had once had an Orion and it wasn't uncommon for them to work closely with CALfire, County, BLM, or even other National Park tanker planes during bad fire seasons. The 747 put those smaller aircraft to shame. In less than 15 minutes she had put down as much retardant as Windlifter, Piston Peak's current heaviest lifter, could apply in 10 trips.
Then as quickly as the VLAT had arrived she was gone, probably heading to the closes airport with a runway capable of holding her weight. With the forest in front of Blade now painted red with retardant, the chances of Dusty burning to death were now significantly reduced. Now Blade could focus on the much bigger problem…how in the world where they going to get Dusty out of a tree in the middle of the forest?
The CAP Cessna must have been really tired, really nervous, or some combination of the two because she did the bounce on landing. She then rolled her way along the tarmac, before stopping under the tower with a big yawn. Tired then, Maru guessed that was to be expected. The way this fire had blown up, it probably had caused half the emergency crews in Northern California to lose sleep last night. The mechanic couldn't do anything to treat the little planes exhaustion, but there was something else he could do.
"You hungry?"
"Starving…" CAP Two Eight Hotel started without thinking, then she gave an apologetic squeak. "But I can wait until I get back to base. I don't want to be a bother."
"Listen sweetheart. It is going to take me a couple of minutes to get all of these photos loaded onto the computer. The least I can do is make sure that you have something in your fuel tanks to tie you over."
"Thanks." She ducked her gaze.
"I am assuming that you are an AVGas type of girl?" Maru asked, and the Cessna nodded.
"Yes, sir."
Maru leaded the little Cessna over to the fuel pumps and gave her a good half a tank, which the mechanic was pretty sure no one was going to miss because Cabbie would burn through that many gallons of petrol in ten minutes flat. Then he had the CAP plane pop her view port. Pulling out the camera and Maru headed to computer in the main hanger.
"Well, let's look at what you have for us."
The sun was trying, and failing, to peek through the thick smoke that covered the valley floor, but at this point Dynamite really didn't really care. Every single member of her motley crew was exhausted, dehydrated, and feeling the pain of blistered paint, but thankfully no one was complaining. Not that she would have expected Pinecone, Drip, Blackout, or Avalanche to murmur. She trusted the fellow Smokejumpers with her life, but she hadn't been nearly as sure about the various other members of staff that Old Jammer had managed to enlist in the effort to keep the National Park's last escape path clear.
With the park's only structural fire engine out of commission and ordered to the relief station to get repairs, Dynamite had to get a bit creative. Every piece of construction equipment Dynamite could get her hands on was dragged into clearing vegetation and the occasional rockslide from around the road. When the flames got a little bit to close they had used the nozzles on the road water tankers to wet things down and they had even lit a couple of back fires to burn the fuel away from the tourists.
In a way it was a comfort to have some sections of the road burn over, yes it was scary as Honda to experience but Dynamite could stop worrying about anything that was already in the black. If only she could stop worrying about the tourists. As far as anyone could tell there were at least 150 vehicles still in the park. 30 of those, were staff such as Patch, Maru, and the Smokejumpers. The rest were tourists, and no one knew for sure if their count was accurate or a vast underestimation.
Dynamite and Rake, the fire forklift from the lodge, had just finished getting a donut on a highly panicking member of the public when Dynamite felt the tale-tell rumble of heavy equipment heading up the road. She wasn't disappointed when a bright red interface engine came around the bend.
"Who's boss?" The clearly experienced apparatus scanned the ash streaked vehicles in search for some sort of rank markings.
"I am." Dynamite rolled up and leveled a hard gaze up ward as though to dare the specialized fire engine to make a joke about her size. He didn't, instead the engine simply nodded.
"I have brought you some more tires." At the interface engine's words several grass wagons, pumper engines, water tenders, and even a pair of browsers peeked from behind the interface engine. "That said, we are kind of hoping that we can swap personal with you. We could really use some heavy lifters for our assigned mission."
"Which is?"
"Clearing a path to the fuel storage tanks near the Fusel Lodge. Apparently all nine of them caught fire last night and are still burning. We have a specialized fuel fire team standing by but most of the hazmat and gas burn vehicles were never designed for bush fires so we need to clear them a path." The engine's problem made sense, and if the fuel tank fire was a bad as he seemed to indicate time was of the essence. Having a few vehicles who knew the park as well as the back of their windshield wipers could help prevent catastrophe.
"Rake, Pinecone, think you are ready to take charge?" Both vehicles gave the affirmative. "Good, cause your job is to keep this evacuation path clear. Avalanche, Drip, and Blackout, you are with me."
The Smokejumpers were heading to face the inferno head on.
"Blade…Blade I know you can hear me." The voice was familiar, but still felt far away. Blade tried to allow himself to drift back to sleep. "Chrysler Blade, answer your slagging com channel!"
Blade's eyes snapped open. "Maru?"
"Who else?" Annoyance was thick in the mechanic's voice.
"What do you want?" Blade yawned. He hadn't realized that he had dozed off, but his body was telling him that the few minutes of shut eye he had managed to catch wasn't nearly enough.
"I want to know why you didn't mention that you were leaking?"
"I am not leaking." Blade tried to keep his voice neutral, while trying to figure out how in the world the mechanic had been able to determine that Blade a had a slow leak in one of his fuel lines.
"And the next thing you are going to tell me is that you are seeping instead." Maru was livid.
"I will be back as soon as we figure out a way to get Dusty detangled from the trees."
"If you continue to do this, I am going to be forced to ground you." Apparently Maru had decided that Blade wasn't going to take his personal health seriously, perhaps the mechanic could threaten the Attack chief into submission. Well, two could play at that game.
"Fine by me. Ground me where I am."
"Helicopters!" Maru spat as though it was the worst swear word he could think of. Then the line went dead…which terrified Blade more that he would like to admit. As long as Maru was talking you knew you were safe, when he went quite it was time to panic. Blade had a feeling that he was going to be in a whole slag of trouble when he got back to base.
Aerospace Note: So in the last chapter I highlighted a few of the really cool firefighting aircraft. Today, I will focus on some of the ground fire apparatus. When you think of fire apparatus you tend to think of trucks and engines, but it is rare to see an actual fire truck fighting wildfires as of those types tend to prefer to keep their wheels on the pavement. Instead the question you should be asking is it an engine, a tender, or something more specialized. Here a few quick rules of thumb to help you out.
If it is carrying water for other vehicles, or it is designed to put out fires at an airport you are looking at a tender. These vehicles are designed to get the water, retardant, or other fluid to the fire. Many tenders don't mind going off road, but the largest tankers tend to roll over if you take them off road. Ryker is a great example of an airport crash tender.
If it isn't at an airport and it is actively pumping water onto a fire, then you are probably looking at an engine. Engines are vehicles have the ability to pump water from either a small internal tank, a external water source such as a body of water or hydrant, or a tender. What sets a wildfire engine apart from their city brothers is the fact that they can pump water while moving. That special skill is known as pump and go. Pulaski would be a great example of an engine. Given Pulaksi's hybrid of wildland and city fire characteristics he is probably an example of an interface engine which are designed to protect structures in wildfire prone areas.
If it it carries a large ladder, then you can call it a truck. Red can be either called a truck or an engine because he is a special vehicle called a Quint. Quint are a hybrid truck/engine.
If it is working a fire and isn't one of the three described above it probably has a specialized job on the fire line. Whether it is the Rehab units who are in charge of keeping the firefighters healthy, a squad transporting personal, or a hazmat dealing with dangerous chemicals, you can never go wrong calling any of these vehicles an apparatus. Oh, and all else fails, when you are in doubt you are never wrong when truck, tender, or engine an fire apparatus either.
Well, I hoped that helped you figure out what type of fire apparatus just rolled by. If you have any questions about this or any other aspect of wildland firefighting that you would like me to take on in future installments please drop me a message or review.