World's Biggest Firefighting Helicopters Join SoCal's Quiver

LOS ALAMITOS, CA — Another treacherous wildfire season could be on tap for California's drought-stricken topography, and fire officials are gearing up by adding two of the world's largest firefighting helicopters to Southern California's fleets.

On Tuesday, a joint disaster-response team will debut a 180-day program to make the two massive helicopters available to Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura county fire departments.

The Quick Reaction Force program was made possible by Southern California Edison with a near $18 million injection of funds.

The initiative comes as millions of residents in Southland counties become vulnerable to a rapidly approaching fire season. Across the southern counties, fuels are dry and wildfire-prone, fire experts warn.

The program is an expansion from a similar program that was launched last year and it could not have come at a better time as California sinks deeper into drought.

The two powerful Boeing Chinook CH-47 helitankers are considered the world's largest fire suppression, retardant-dropping helicopters with the capacity to carry 3,000 gallons. And unlike other firefighting helicopters, they can fly at night.

"That's a lot of firefighting power, if you will, when you can drop 3,000 gallons of water onto a brush fire. It's an important tool," Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Thanh Nguyen told City News Service. "We're grateful that we will be able to use it. It's impressive."

Officials demonstrated the massive helicopters' on Monday at a training base in Los Alamitos. OCFA Chief Brian Fennessy described the rapid firefighting response that will be possible for fire incident commanders calling for deployment, who can say, "Get me the QRF."

"One's coming from Orange, one's coming from L.A., one's coming from Ventura County," Fennessy told KTLA5. "We're going to jump on that fire, hopefully, beat it down before it becomes a problem."

The program contracts exclusively for up to 180 days with Coulson Aviation to combine aerial firefighting resources, pre-assembled in Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties, with a mobile retardant base and hover-filling tanks.

The program includes two Boeing Chinook CH-47 helitankers, one based at Van Nuys Air Tanker Base and the other at the Joint Forces Training Base Los Alamitos, and a Sikorsky S-61 helitanker, based in Ventura County.

For the Los Angeles County Fire Department, the CH-47s will enhance the department's air operations fleet which includes five Sikorsky S-70 Firehawks and five Bell 412 helicopters, in addition to a seasonal contract with Quebec for the 90-day lease of two CL-415 SuperScoopers expected to arrive in early September, officials said.

READ MORE: Largest Helitanker To Aid Southland Firefighters, Edison Funded (2020)

The state is undoubtedly barreling toward another hectic fire season. Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed a record $2 billion in May — double what he proposed in January — to prepare.

"You're already feeling the temperature shifts," he told reporters in May. "You already saw those red flag warnings, which are earlier in May than we've seen in many, many years because of the winds that are coming earlier."

Californians last year were hard-pressed to find refuge between an intensifying coronavirus pandemic and a hellscape of wildfires that hampered air quality all over the state.

A historic 4,257,863 acres of California burned last year in the state's largest fire season in modern history. As fire season was already in full swing last year, more than 12,000 lightning strikes hammered the state, igniting massive fires. The state also experienced its first "gigafire" in 2020: a burn area that exceeded 1 million acres.

In mid-May a fire quickly swelled to more than 1,000 acres and forced the evacuation of about 1,000 people in Los Angeles's Topanga Canyon.

"This is not normal, to have a big fire like this in May," Scott Ferguson, a Topanga Canyon resident, told the Los Angeles Times. He is board chair of the Topanga Coalition for Emergency Preparedness. "This is the type of thing we'd usually be doing in November."

READ MORE: 4 Key Things To Know About CA's 2021 Wildfire Season

The City News Service and Patch Editor Kat Schuster contributed to this report.