Grounded firefighting jet raised doubts among USFS officials

By: MARCUS WOHLSEN - Associated Press | Tuesday, June 26, 2007 7:18 PM PDT ∞

SAN FRANCISCO -- A one-time passenger jet modified to fight wildfires remained grounded Tuesday after striking the tops of several trees and nearly crashing while battling a mountain blaze along the San Joaquin Valley's southern edge.

The DC-10 air tanker was unveiled with much fanfare by California fire officials last year as the first firefighting jet of its kind and used again in 2007 despite the U.S. Forest Service's refusal to certify the plane for firefighting use.

The plane was preparing to drop fire retardant along a Kern County ridge when a severe downdraft forced the aircraft to sink 100 to 200 feet, said Mike Padilla, chief of aviation for California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The jet's left wing clipped the tops of several trees, estimated to be 100 to 150 feet tall, but the pilots powered safely out of the descent.

"They were under complete control the whole time," Padilla said.

No one was injured in the near-miss incident, and the crew returned to its base in Victorville.

The plane, known as Tanker 910, was being used to halt the spread of a wildfire about 80 miles north of Los Angeles. The blaze, dubbed the White Fire, had burned more than 16 square miles of brush and destroyed five buildings by Tuesday afternoon, state forestry spokesman Martin Johnson said.

The Forest Service has refused to certify the plane over concerns about the number of hours already logged on the 31-year-old DC-10, said Mark Rey, a Department of Agriculture undersecretary.

In the summer of 2002, two large air tankers that suffered in-flight structural failures while fighting fires crashed, killing a total of five crew members. In both cases, the wings on a PB4Y-2 over Colorado and a C-130 flying near Yosemite National Park appeared to fall off.

"What we're concerned about is catastrophic metal fatigue that results in a plane breaking up in the air, because those are the accidents we had a couple years ago," Rey said. "Call us overly cautious, but we're erring on (the side of) an abundance of caution based on two previous accidents where the two planes broke up in the air."

Tanker 910's virtual prohibition from federal land, including national forests, means it cannot be dispatched over vast swaths of California, including the slopes near Lake Tahoe where a destructive wildfire is raging.

The DC-10 jet has won approvals to serve as a firefighting aircraft from the Federal Aviation Administration and the Interagency Air Tanker Board. The FAA's certifications allowed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to deploy it in California, Rey said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

But the McDonnell Douglas aircraft was only designed to fly 67,000 hours and has passed that figure, said Tom Harbour, director of fire and aviation management for the Forest Service.

The jet can be flown past that, but the manufacturer or modifier must demonstrate to the government why it can still be safely operated, Harbour said by phone.

The California forestry department's aviation chief called the Forest Service's limit on the DC-10's service life an "artificial requirement." While the jet's major components must be replaced after being used for a certain number of hours, Padilla said, the plane itself has no specific limits on hours of use.

"We're absolutely satisfied and pleased with what this aircraft is doing," Padilla said. "It's a very good tool, and we think it has a future."

State officials hope to get the jet airborne again within 30 days, pending repairs and an investigation into the cause of the mishap, Padilla said.

The DC-10 can carry 12,000 gallons of water or fire retardant -- 10 times the volume of the standard propeller planes that make up the bulk of California's firefighting air fleet.

Among its accomplishments, state fire officials credit Tanker 910 with knocking back the edge of the Day fire, the fifth largest in modern California history, as flames threatened the popular tourist town of Ojai.

The jet once belonged to American Airlines and later flew 380-passenger charter flights to Hawaii before being put on fire fighting duty. The plane fought five fires last year and deposited retardant on two Kern County fires over the weekend before Monday's incident.

The state has contracted with the plane's owner, 10 Tanker Air Carrier of Victorville, for exclusive use of Tanker 910 through the 2009 fire season at a cost of $5 million per year.

Calls to 10 Tanker Air Carrier were not immediately returned.

The White Fire was about 40 percent contained Tuesday, Johnson said. Crews did not know when to expect full containment.

Overnight, burning debris rolled beyond the northern fire line and ignited brush in the nearby Horse Thief Canyon area, Forest Service spokesman Virgil Mink said. Morning firefighting crews were mopping up those scattered flames, he said.

A state assessment team was evaluating possible fire damage to the summer homes and cabins that dot the area, but no damage had been confirmed, Mink said.

-- Associated Press Writers Scott Lindlaw in San Francisco and Jacob Adelman in Los Angeles contributed to this story.

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