Forest Service may acquire more tankers like one in California crash

By: ERICA WERNER - Associated Press | Tuesday, April 26, 2005 9:52 PM PDT ∞

WASHINGTON -- Despite a fatal air tanker crash in Northern California last week, the government may seek to acquire more of the same kind of tanker to bolster its firefighting capability, the director of U.S. forest policy said Tuesday.

Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey said the plan to acquire more P-3 Orions would be re-evaluated in light of the crash that killed three pilots April 20 in the Lassen National Forest. But he said there was no indication the plane suffered structural failure in flight.

"As we look at where to go going forward we were leaning and may still yet lean toward acquiring additional P-3s, because the military has a number of Orion P-3s that can be resurrected at a reasonable cost and used as the backbone of a larger tanker fleet in conjunction with all the other aviation assets," Rey told a hearing of the Senate Energy Committee's subcommittee on public lands and forests.

He said it would take a couple months to make a final decision. And he reiterated that the government's longer-term plan is to assemble a firefighting fleet dependent more on helicopters and less on the large fixed-wing tankers that can drop huge amounts of fire retardant on blazes.

Rey was questioned by Western-state lawmakers who've focused on the air tanker issue since last May, when the U.S. Forest Service and the Department of Interior grounded the government's entire fleet of 33 large tankers after a determination that their airworthiness could not be ensured. Two different types of air tankers broke up in flight in 2002.

"We had this tragic air crash in California last week and I guess I'm very unclear in my own mind about what the plan is with regard to the air tanker situation in both the short term and long term," said Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M. "I had sort of thought we were on the way to getting that fixed, but I guess my information was erroneous."

The government earlier this month said it was allowing 10 of the 33 air tankers to return to the federal firefighting fleet, including seven P-3 Orions operated by Aero Union Corp. of Chico, Calif. It was one of those planes that crashed last week, and the National Transportation Safety Board is investigating.

Rey told lawmakers that whatever the decision about acquiring more P-3s, the government would have adequate resources for the 2005 fire season. Above-average fire activity is possible in the northwest and northern Rocky Mountain states later this summer while significant fire activity is expected in the southern parts of Arizona and New Mexico, Rey said.

To date, the 2005 aviation plan includes six heavy air tankers, six large helitankers and helicopters, and more than 70 small and medium helicopters, Rey said. Cooperative agreements with states and other agencies will also give the government access to two other air tankers, 28 single-engine air tankers and dozens of other aircraft available on a "call-when-needed" basis.

"We are confident that our existing fleet ... is going to be adequate to meet our needs for the foreseeable future," Rey said.

He said the reconfigured fleet used during the 2004 fire season actually had slightly better success than the fleet more heavily reliant on large tankers used in 2003.

Rey was pressed by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., to move more quickly on negotiating contracts with companies in Oregon that want to provide use of helicopters. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., asked him for answers about whether firefighters are getting adequate training.

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