The number 12 is painted in white on the red tail of this large air tanker at Santa Maria Airport. Air Attack 12 turns around after being restocked with fire retardant and takes off to make another crucial drop on the Gifford Fire which has scorched over 120,000 acres in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara Counties. This is one of over a hundred daily similar missions to tackle the wildfire which is the biggest this year in the state.
"On the busy days of this fire, we were putting record volumes of retardant out there. I think we hit 260,000 gallons in one day, which is pretty significant," explained Miguel Quiz, the air tanker base manager. He is a busy man as he’s responsible for the comings and goings on the ground.
He admits he hasn't had "much sleep" in the last couple of weeks.
"There's a lot that goes on around here, so when we're constantly loading aircraft coming in and out, it's not just the airplane coming in. We have mechanics that got to come and do some checks in between loads and things like that. They'll come and put fuel in," he said.
Across the airfield are giant containers, where the red fire retardant is mixed before being loaded onto the aircraft. The retardant is the dropped where needed, to back up the fire fighters on the ground. It’s a dynamic situation.
"It's driven by fire, it's driven by weather, topography, and all the things that influence fire. And our main job is to try and corral it, try and contain it, and trying to keep it away from people as best as we can," he said.
It’s not just the familiar tankers dropping retardant, there are smaller aircraft which guide the larger aircraft to make their drops and another which spots potential hot spots in the 120,000 plus acre wildfire.
"When they're going to the fire, they're in a stressful situation. They're flying, they are getting ready to drop, and they're getting ready to get out of the drop after dropping a bunch of weight out of an aircraft," said Quiz.
It takes "a lot of skill" to pilot the aircraft in the wildfires, and to maneuver them after dropping such a heavy weight.
"I had a pilot give me an example one time. He said, 'if you ever skateboarded, coast on a skateboard and hold a five-gallon bucket of water, and then as you're coasting, dump the five- gallon bucket as fast as you can out of that while you're rolling and see what it does to your balance and multiply that by 10 in the air'. In smoke with an aircraft and lives in hand. Takes a lot of skill," he said.
It’s an impressive operation says Chris Kunkle, who runs the Santa Monica airfield.
"It's magnificent, I mean the mission that they're doing and putting their lives in risk all the time, it takes a special person," he said.
And as for Quiz? He says the most important part of his stressful job is being a calm presence.
"The more calm we can be, the better clear our minds can be and the better decisions we can make," he said.
"Aviation can get really fast. You think about the dynamics of what we're doing. Aircraft, they're moving fast. They're getting out to the fire. And when they're over the fire, they're coming in and they're making these drops and maneuvering aircraft the way that aircraft should probably not be maneuvered. So it takes a lot of skill. It takes a lotta pressure," he said.
"A lot of these pilots, they do it because they love it. And they do because they're good at it. And they'd do it because they know there's a need."
And then it’s back to the job for Quiz as he prepares for another busy day tackling the fire.
