A huge C-130 cargo plane climbs into the sky after taking off from a Ventura County military base.
The planes are used for military and humanitarian missions around the world. In January, they also helped fight some of Southern California’s wildfires.
"Our unit made 22 drops on the Hughes Fire and the Palisades Fire," said Maj. Nate Southwick. He's a pilot with the California Air National Guard’s 146th Airlift Wing, based at the Channel Islands Air National Guard Station in Port Hueneme.
"It does feel good (to help). I think that's why a lot of people are involved in this program. My house in Camarillo almost burned down in the Mountain Fire. I have family up in Northern California, that's where I grew up, in Santa Rosa. So in 2017, I was dropping fire retardant around my dad's house up in Sonoma County. You stay in this program long enough, you're going to be dropping retardant near your friends, or your family, or both."
Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve airlift wings from around the western U.S. spent a week at the Port Hueneme base, tuning up for high fire season.
"We have all four of our modular airborne firefighting system wings. They're specialized and certified to fly with the U.S. Forest Service and Cal Fire," said Master Sergeant Nicholas Carzis, Public Affairs Superintendent for the 146th Airlift Wing. He added that the air and ground crews go through all the things they would during activation during a fire, and make practice drops.
Planes based in Colorado, Wyoming, and Nevada are a part of the drill. There are a total of eight C-130s with MAFFS designations.
While the C-130’s normally move cargo or people, during major wildfire events they can be converted into firefighting air tankers with the installation of giant modular units in their cargo bays. "The MAFFS system is this piece of equipment that is able to fit into the back of our C-130 without any major modifications in order to assist with dropping fire retardant during fires," said Carzis.
The giant four engine turboprop planes can carry more than 40,000 pounds of cargo, or 64 paratroopers. When they're fitted with the MAFFS units, they can drop 3,000 gallons of fire retardant. It’s enough to create a quarter of a mile long fire break which is 100 feet wide.
The eight C-130 MAFFS planes are used when all available firefighting aircraft in a region are busy. Stanton Florea is with the U.S. Forest Service and the National Interagency Fire Center.
"The C-130 aircraft equipped with MAFFS basically serve as a surge capacity for the national air tanker fleet," said Florea. "MAFFS can be activated once all those air tankers that are normally contracted with us are already committed."
While firefighting is just a part of the duties of members of the airlift wings, they say they are glad to step up in a crisis. This is a part time job for Major Nate Southwick, whose day job is being a commercial airline pilot.
"It's exciting for me, and this is rewarding," said Southwick. "It's an exciting, fun aircraft to fly. In the airliner, we don't go and fly low levels at 300 feet above the ground. The passengers would probably freak out if we did that. But with this airplane, it's sometimes the mission."
While the C-130s will fly throughout the western U.S. as needed to battle fires, Southwick says it feels especially good to help when there’s one in our backyard.
"I worked on the Thomas Fire. I think maybe before the Thomas Fire (in 2017), people didn't know that this was a thing. The Thomas Fire definitely highlighted us. As fires are getting closer to us, communities are realizing we have this valuable asset here," said the pilot.
The C-130 MAFFS units are now tuned up and ready for high fire season. So are ground crews. It could be even busier for them. The Channel Islands Air National Guard Station's facilities have been upgraded so they can also load large civilian air tankers with fire retardant.
