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As wildfires in Boulder and in the West continue to worsen, the Global Supertanker is a much needed technology.

    Two weeks after finishing her wildland firefighting training with the Boulder Emergency Squad, Aerospace Engineering Master’s student Rydell Stottlemyer was called to the scene of the Calwood Fire on Saturday, October 17, 2020.

    On that Saturday morning, she was in drone training when she and her team heard on the radios about a new fire breaking out in Boulder County. “We ended up being one of the first departments on scene,” said Stottlemyer.

    Once people evacuated and they evaluated the scale of the fire, Stottlemyer helped create a ‘fire line’, which entails removing any flammable objects, such as trees and brush, to prevent the fire from spreading further. However, the fire moved faster than the firefighters could maintain with the flames spreading as fast as a thousand acres per hour.

    In wildland firefighting, it is tremendously difficult and dangerous to work against the ‘flame front’, which is the direction the fire predominantly moves. Instead, a safe anchor point is established where firefighters work to develop these fire lines to contain the fire as much as possible. Since cooler temperatures lead to decreased fire activity in the evenings, Stottlemyer worked through the night with her team on the scene.

    “Several of us spent the night in the Calwood Education Center,” said Stottlemyer. The next day, she went back along the fire line to put out any fires that had the potential to cross it. After spending her weekend in smoke with little sleep, she returned to the University of Colorado Boulder to continue her studies and job as a teaching assistant.

    After burning 10,113 acres, the Calwood Fire reached 100% containment on November 14, 2020. It was Boulder County’s largest wildfire on record. The fire destroyed 26 structures worth a total of $37 million, and the cost of suppression efforts for both the Calwood Fire and the neighboring Lefthand Canyon Fire, which started on October 18, totaled $6.6 million.

    “The country spends a lot of money on fighting fires,” said Stottelmyer. “The last thing they want to do is spend even more money because it goes over budget almost every year.” She argues that we should “spend more money on fire prevention, more controlled burning and trying to fix unhealthy forests.”

    Since wildfires have been prematurely extinguished over the last hundred or so years, modern wildfires are exceptionally harmful. Forest ecosystems evolved with periodic wildfires that would naturally thin forests. By preventing them in the past, the amount of vegetation that can fuel wildfires has significantly increased. Increased drought and a warming climate have contributed to making wildfires so large that they cause irreparable damage to these forest ecosystems.

   “The country spends a lot of money on fighting fires... the last thing they want to do is spend even more money because it goes over budget almost every year."

    As wildfires become larger and more frequent, it is apparent that new technological developments are required to deal with them. Thomas Parsons is the Assistant Chief Pilot at Global Supertanker Services, and he and his team operate the 747 supertanker, the largest tanker ever used in wildfire mitigation.

    The Global Supertanker is a Boeing 747- 400 Very Large Airtanker (VLAT) aircraft that is capable of dropping nearly 19,000 gallons of water or fire retardant to fight wildfires. This vehicle can fill its 10 liquid tanks in less than 30 minutes, and it utilizes eight high pressure and two low pressure air tanks to release its cargo from as low as 200 feet above the surface. It is the largest VLAT ever created and can hold nearly twice as much cargo as the second largest VLAT used for wildfire suppression.

    “In the beginning, we would often see comments from around the world on social media saying, ‘they’ll learn you can’t fly a 747 in low altitude mountainous environments effectively.’ We proved them wrong through hundreds of hours of test flights and training flights, and we wrote the book on operating the 747 as an effective firefighting tanker”, said Parsons.

“The better the technology, the safer it is for us, and the more efficient we can be at mitigating these fires.”

    The Global Supertanker has fought wildfires in California and Oregon in addition to numerous international missions in Bolivia, Chile and Israel. “When I push the button to make the drop, a lot of people contribute to that”, said Parsons. “It takes a team of 15 people or so. This includes those in maintenance, ground operations and loaders that all help to make it happen.”

    Parsons also emphasized that “airplanes do not put out fires. We are just a tool for the guys on the ground. The guys on the ground are doing the heavy lifting and doing most of the hard work.”

    Still, when looking at fires in the West, it is apparent that there needs to be more investment into advancing technology both to prevent wildfires and to help fight them. “To me there is no doubt that the planet is warming,” said Parsons. “Every year we are burning more acreage with bigger fires. As long as there are people building and living in the forests, we don’t have the luxury to let these big fires burn. I think it’s important to invest in new technology to try and get a handle on these fires that are bound to come.”

    “I also think it’s important to keep hiring these contractors that come up with new technologies,” said Parsons. “New technology makes it safer. The better the technology, the safer it is for us, and the more efficient we can be at mitigating these fires.”

    Parsons emphasized that an ‘initial attack’ is required, which involves fighting fires when they are first detected rather than waiting to see how they develop. When initial attack fires aren’t contained or controlled, they become ‘extended attack fires’ that are often more damaging and costly. Parsons argued that “In a perfect world, it’s healthy to let forests burn, but we don’t live in that world anymore. With the planet warming, more people building and living in forests, poor land management for over a hundred years and various other factors, we need to hit these fires early and hard.”

    A study by Dr. Stephen Fuller and Dr. Keith Waters at George Mason University (GMU) supports this notion. This study utilized U.S. Forest Service data to conclude that deployment of air tankers, like the Global Supertanker, early in the life of wildfires dramatically reduces fire duration and the resulting economic impact.

    It is challenging, however, to implement these results. Parsons said, “It’s a difficult problem when the fire is small and management orders a VLAT. Let’s say a wildfire was contained at 5 acres, then someone must explain why an expensive tanker was ordered on such a small fire. If management didn’t put a VLAT on the scene and if that same fire were to spread into an urban area and destroy multiple structures, then someone now must explain why they didn’t get a VLAT on the scene earlier. Change is slow, but each year VLATs are being more and more used on initial attack fires instead of letting them grow into what often becomes expensive and destructive extended attack fires.”

    Global Supertanker, the world’s largest air tanker ever created for fighting wildfires, was retired in April 2021 due to financial difficulties. The aircraft was then sold and converted into a cargo aircraft. Nevertheless, a new investor purchased Global Supertanker Services, and at the time of this writing there is talk of modifying another 747 with technology from the Global Supertanker for the 2022 wildfire season.

    In addition to air tankers, innovations in wildfire technology have included developing new fire retardants and using infrared radiation detectors on drones, aircraft and satellites that search for heat signals to help detect and monitor wildfires.

    Nevertheless, more needs to be invested in order to prevent and fight wildfires. Another study from GMU reported that wildfires cost a minimum of $185 billion annually in the United States, and the cost will likely keep rising due to the increasing occurrences of wildfires unless thorough and systematic changes are made. 

    To save over $100 million a year, the state of California utilizes up to 1,000 prison inmates a year to fight wildfires on pay ranging between $1 to $5 a day and an additional $1 to 2 an hour when on a fire line. The ethics of this practice have been debated since the program started in 1946.

    Another debated practice is that the majority of wildland firefighters are not provided with ample protection for their eyes or airways. Indoor firefighting personal protective equipment (PPE) are too heavy to take to the scene of a wildfire and typical face masks, such as a N95, and respirators aren’t very effective at filtering out wildfire gases.

    “The basics of firefighting are still what they were about 50 years ago, and there’s been limited technological improvement,” said Stottlemyer. It is exceptionally challenging to meet a growing problem when technologies to combat them have not matured in tandem. Wildfires are getting worse and more extensive. As this problem grows so too does the need for new innovations to make fighting wildfires more effective, economical and safe. This increasing disparity between growing challenges and stagnant technology indicates that more must be done if we are to truly tackle all aspects of wildland firefighting head on.

Photos in order of appearance: 

Rydell Stottlemyer on scene at the Calwood Fire.

Firefighters at night. Photo Courtesy of Rydell Stottlemyer.

737 Supertanker on ground Photo Courtesy of Global Supertanker Services.

A T-944 Lead B 9 1 plane flies in front of the Global Supertanker at the Apple Fire in Riverside, California. Photo Courtesy of Steve_San_Diego .