The fight from above is critical in giving firefighters a chance to get some semblance of control over the fires, said one fire chief.
With more moderate winds over Southern California, a fleet of helicopters and air tankers has been able to drop in the last two days hundreds of thousands of gallons of water and fire retardant from the skies to help ground crews battle the infernos below.
“They can only fly so low, and when the retardant is dropped, it just blows away,” Fennessy said. “Even if the aircraft can fly in these windy conditions, there are just some times, where the retardant or the water is not hitting the targets, where you need to shut down the air operation. Not because it’s unsafe, but in those kind of winds, it will disintegrate and go all over the place.”
“Can they drop retardant directly on a fire? Absolutely,” he said. “And, sometimes, they do. But most of the time, they’re laying this pink retardant in advance, on a ridgetop. below where a fire is backing down into a canyon, you’ll see them drop it below it. The idea is to give us time.”
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