Disclaimer- Still don't own Planes, but all the spelling and grammar mistakes are my own. I am working on that though.
Chapter 2- Out of Gas
"Piston Peaks Mission Base, Piston Peaks Mission Base, this is CAP Niner Eight Kilo, Over."
"Want now!" Patch swore under her breath and thumbed radio to reply. She really didn't have the time right now to deal with lookiloos, even ones with Search and Rescue callsigns. "CAP Niner Eight Kilo, Piston Peak's air space is closed to all nonessential personal, Over."
"Roger that Piston Peaks, we will not enter airspace until authorized but I should let you know that I have been permission to use lifeguard status and are high bird capable, Over."
"I will notify the fire boss…Wait, we?" Patch began and realized that she had left the transmission hang. "We? Over."
"The incoming Guard, and Civil Air Patrol aircraft. Over."
"Wait? When did they get sent in?" Patch asked, the timeline not adding up. Her call for mutual aid had only been made less than ten minutes ago. The closes aid was more than an hour's flight away. There was no way that help should have arrived so soon.
"We were mobilized, when we realized your long distance radios went dead and we started to get scattered reports of stranded vehicles due to late evacuation orders. By the look and sound of things it seems like we were not sent in vain." There was a slight pause by approaching aircraft. "I am currently picking up an emergency beacon. Do you have a location on the downed aircraft's ELT or do we need to pull in a plane that is Becker capable? Over."
"The down aircraft is one of our own." Patch admitted softly, but there was no time to dwell on the mess the Air Attack team had gotten itself into. "We had eyes on him when he went down so no Becker is needed. I will get the fire boss on the horn and see where you will be most useful."
"Wilco, Piston Peaks Mission Base. CAP Niner Eight Kilo, Out."
The forklift put down the radio permanently tuned to the mutual aid frequency and picked Air Attack set up. "Windlifter, do you copy."
"Windlifter, the cavalry has arrived. I repeat the cavalry has arrived."
"Windlifter, the cavalry has arrived. I repeat the cavalry has arrived."
"Who are they, and what is their ETA?" The Skycrane asked, his eyes glued
"They are mix of Guard and CAP aircraft. Give me a moment and I will get back to you on the ETA." Patch stopped speaking on their radio frequency for a good 3-4 minutes before her voice came back in a cloud of static."Windlifter do you read?"
"You are starting to break up Patch, but for now I can hear you well enough for our needs."
"Good to know." Patch paused for a moment in a way that usually meant that she was taking notes. "There is a highbird standing by on the east side of the park and it looks like we have ten night helos with bucket capability in route, two fixed wing spotters that should arrive at the south east side of the park in 20 minutes." Patch rattled off the information that she had gleaned. "According to the chatter we will also be getting an Evergreen Supertanker flying over at dawn and that we can expect some additional support staff arriving a little bit later in the morning."
"Very good." Windlifter replied, this was a fire that really needed to be fought from the air to be contained. "Blade, did you copy Patch's last message."
"Roger. Get the highbird in position. It will be a whole lot easier for Windlifter to coordinate things." The Helitankers voice broke through the static, but the Skycrane didn't really hear what was being said. Instead he was busy watching a situation going from bad to worse.
"As far as I concerned, I with half the park currently in flames and our only ground evacuation path currently in jeopardy, I will admit that I am pretty grateful they are coming…" There was a whoop of an alarm in the background causing Patch to pause. In front of him Windlifter watched as Cabbie's right engine went from running rough to complete dead. "Who just started squaking 7700?"
"Cabbie! Cabbie are you alright." Dipper asked as she banked sharply to the left trying to get a good look at the limping plane.
Cabbie didn't respond verbally, but he did at least double-key his mike in response. This meant that cargo plane was listening to them, but was too task saturated at the moment to have a conversation. Before their eyes they could see the big plane adjusting his angle and surfaces to maximize his glide ratio. Only once his flight path was stabilized did Cabbie try to restart his engine and Windlifter focused his attention on communicating the emergency to the air field ahead.
"Pan, Pan, Pan. This is Tanker Tree Tree Whiskey escorting Jumper Papa Papa Foxtrot Fife One Heavy. Jumper has an engine out, I repeat, Jumper has engine out. In bound to Piston Flats Airstrip, ETA 15 minutes."
"I know that it is technically allowed in aviation, but I really need to break you all of the habit of saying repeat over the radio." Cabbie gave a pained shuttering cough, but somehow remained in perfect gliding form. "It keeps making me think that I am about to get shot at."
The TSMT was going to have a field day. Between two crashes, an in air incident that was going to require an emergency landing (and better not turn into a crash), night time fire operations by a day flight only qualified team, and the evacuation of an entire National Park, Blade was not looking forward to shear amount of paperwork he was going to have to fill out once this was over. Especially since the incident command system had kind of been thrown out the window when the situation had devolved.
Patch was really the person who was really staying on top of the situation. The Logistic's Section Chief was doing her best to keep tabs on the entire park. She not only knew where all of the Air Attack firefighters were, but where the lodge's fire crew, the various rangers, and national park's road crew were. She was the first one to report that the loss of various structures, from campgrounds to one of the visitor centers, around the park.
The face of Piston Peaks, Blade Ranger's home 16 years, his responsibility for 8 was being permanently changed. The only comfort that he had as he watched the hills around him burn was the fact there had been no reported loss of life. There was still a chance that when fires were out and the ash finally out the investigators would discover the burned out wreck of someone who hadn't gotten the evacuation orders in time, or who had simply not paid attention to them.
Blade refused to admit, that right now there was a good chance that Dusty might become a torched airframe. If the wind shifted just a little bit, the fire could easily sweep over the ridge and light the ponderosa pines like Roman candles. With no retardant or access to water, all Blade Ranger could do at the moment was sit, listening to the radio, pray that the winds would stay steady, and hope that Dusty Crophopper would hurry and wake up so the helo could stop worrying.
It was called task saturation for a reason. Patch was a dispatcher, and a darn good one at that, but there was only so much that a single person could do in these situations. She hadn't even noticed when Maru had managed to slip into the tower and took over the delicate job of getting the Highbird in place. But there he was, keeping up a constant stream of chatter to make sure the plane wasn't suffering from hypoxia as it soared up to over 10,000 feet AGL (above ground level).
Maru's presence gave Patch enough mental wiggle room to stop thinking in the present and start thinking just a little bit a head. She was about to have an aft-ton of support pouring into the park's boundaries. The trick would be to send them where they would make the most good. The protecting the entrance road had to be the first priority as long as they were still evacuating tourists. Protecting their downed trainee SEAT was of course another huge priority which was followed closely with the need to protect the Air Attack Mission Base so the park had at least one functional air strip in the park for emergencies.
Using the lodge airstrip was completely out of the question now. Based on a panicked series of text messages that Patch had gotten from Cad, all six of the fuel tanks near the lodge were currently on fire. When the Park Superintendent ordered Patch to fix the problem, she had coolly informed him that there was nothing that the Air Attack Team could do and that he going to have to wait for Mutual Aid to arrive. Though, she suspected that even when aid arrived they may just cut the fuel lines to insure that the flames didn't spread further, surround the tank with foam, and then let the fire burn itself out.
The mechanic shifted from the radio set and grabbed the tower's telephone. Based on Maru's tone of voice, Patch suspected that he was on the horn with Piston Flats Airstrip trying to figure out if Cabbie had successfully made it on the ground. Both forklifts knew that the loss of an engine was a real but manageable problem. The C-119 did luckily have positive climb characteristics even when flying with one engine. Their cargo plane should be fine as long as he didn't lose the other one. That said, Cabbie was a C-119. The aircraft were known for being pretty reliable…right up until the moment that they weren't.
"Cabbie, what do you need me to do?" Windlifter asked as he hovered as close as he dared to the laboring aircraft. Even though he couldn't see Dipper, he knew at the moment she was circling the air strip ready to chase away stray planes ignored the towers statement that the airstrip was closed to handle and emergency landing.
"Talk to the tower for me please, I am about to get pretty task saturated again." Cabbie spoke with a voice was that barely more than a harsh whisper and his with eyes glued on the primary runway, then, almost as an afterthought he added. "And make sure that they have a fuel truck handy. I think I just ran out of fumes."
Despite running on one engine, Cabbie still managed to perform a perfect cross runway approach and banked right for final. Then the other engine sputtered out. Dipper gave let out a very unladylike string of curses that would even make an air carrier blush. Windlifter did his best to remain calm. The chopper backed off to make sure that his down draft wouldn't harm Cabbie's glide. It wasn't enough. Watching the rate that Cabbie was sinking, the cargo plane was going to come up short.
There was a horrible screeching sound as wood scrapped and splintered against metal, but the C-119 didn't even bat an eye. He kept his nose slightly up as he made minor adjustments to his trim to compensate for the momentum he was losing to the tree tops. Cabbie was still going to miss the tarmac, but he had conserved enough power to at least make to the blast pad.
Once over the trees, Cabbie quickly dropped his nose parallel to the ground and controlled his speed completely with his flaps. He was still coming in steep enough that everyone was holding their breath. There was so much that could go wrong when an aircraft landed without power, especially an aircraft with as large as Cabbie.
Then cargo plane tires crunched as they made contact with the yellow and black chevrons. Cabbie bounced and then skidded as he threw on the brakes. For a moment it looked like he was going to slid off the runway and into the grass, but the old plane feathered his brakes. Cabbie came to a complete stop on the tarmac, then he closed his eyes and sighed.
Author's Note- Hello everyone, thank you so much for the warm reception that you have given this story thus far. As someone who is new to the scene all of your reviews and feedback have meant the world. I hope this chapter was as entertaining as the last one.
Onto the only only reason to really read the end note, the stuff about aerospace. Today's topic is task saturation. Task saturation is a pretty common occurrence for people working in emergency services. It happens when you simply have too much input and your brain doesn't know what to do with it. So far in this story three characters have found themselves buried aft deep saturation, and as I am posting this chapter I realized each of the three represent one of the typical coping mechanisms that people usually have to these types of crisis.
The first person get completely overwhelmed was of course Dusty. Dusty is a great example of someone who frozen when they got task saturated. While this is considered to be the most harmless of coping mechanisms on the ground, it is the most dangerous in the air. This is because pilots who freeze in an emergency loose their situational awareness, leaving their aircraft to fly into the ground. Watching Dusty's crash there was a lot of stuff he could have done to make a reasonable emergency tree landing when his engine went out. Instead he panic and went pinwheeling through the pines instead.
The second person to really get task saturated is Patch. She exhibits signs of being a compartmentalizer. People or forklifts with this type of coping mechanism start having a hard time looking at the big picture. As a result they will start having a hard time figuring out where all the pieces fit and will sometimes completely lose track of where resources are. A compartmentalizer can put their entire team in a lot of danger if the problem is not identified. Luckily the Piston Peak Attack Team is a tight knit little family and Maru has stepped in to take some of the load to allow Patch to recover.
The third example is Cabbie. Cabbie, like many military pilots, is a channeller. These group of people become hyperfocused on a single problem when they get task saturated and will pretty much ignore everything else. They get into trouble when the stop communicating and lose the ability to see other problems sneaking up on them...like a second engine going out. Still, out of the three if you are in a plane and your pilot gets task saturated in an emergency pray that they are a channeller because they are the most likely to get you back firmly on the ground.
From personal experience I know that I am a channeller. How do you think that you would deal with task saturation? What types of coping mechanisms do you think that the rest of the attack team use?