COLORADO SPRINGS — The deadly crash of a military cargo plane fighting a South Dakota wildfire forced officials to ground seven other Air Force air tankers, removing critical firefighting aircraft from the skies during one of the busiest and most destructive wildfire seasons ever to hit the West.
The C-130 from an Air National Guard wing based in Charlotte, N.C., was carrying a crew of six and fighting a 6.5-square-mile blaze in the Black Hills of South Dakota when it crashed Sunday, killing at least one crew member and injuring others.
President Obama offered thoughts and prayers to the crew and their families. “The men and women battling these terrible fires across the West put their lives on the line every day for their fellow Americans,” he said.
The crash and grounding cut the number of large air tankers fighting this summer’s outbreak of wildfires by one-third.
The military put the remaining seven C-130s on an “operational hold,” keeping them on the ground indefinitely. That left 14 federally contracted heavy tankers in use until investigators gain a better understanding of what caused the crash.
“You’ve basically lopped off eight air tankers immediately from your inventory, and that’s going to make it tougher to fight wildfires,” said Mike Archer, who distributes a daily newsletter of wildfire news.
“And who knows how long the planes will be down?” he said, adding that investigators will take time to make their conclusions.
C-130 air tankers have crashed on firefighting duty before. In 2002, a privately owned civilian version of an older-model C-130 crashed in California, killing three crew members. The plane broke up in flight and an investigation blamed fatigue cracks in the wings.
The crash, in part, prompted a review of the airworthiness of large U.S. air tankers and led ultimately to a greatly reduced fleet of large civilian tanker planes. The 44 planes in the fleet a decade ago has dwindled to nine being flown on U.S. Forest Service exclusive use contracts right now.
Another aerial firefighting plane, the Lockheed P2V, has had some problems in recent months. One crashed in Utah, killing the two pilots, and another one crash-landed in Nevada.
A military spokesman said he did not know when the grounded planes would resume firefighting flights. The military planes had been filling up with fire retardant and flying out of Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs.
They were used to fight fires in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and South Dakota.
The U.S. Forest Service, which owns the MAFFS devices and coordinates the program with the military, expressed support for the decision to stand down the MAFFS.
However, as a result, the Forest Service now will have to prioritize fires and the resources allocated to fight them, said Jennifer Jones, a Forest Service spokeswoman at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.
Fires threatening human life will be a top priority, followed by those threatening communities and community infrastructure, other types of property, and finally natural and cultural resources, she said.
“The bottom line is, we will continue to do our best to fulfill our responsibility to protect the public, communities and cultural and natural resources during wildfires with the assets that we have available,” she said.
Firefighters in the field also will adjust their strategy and tactics based on the availability of air tankers.
The plane that crashed was fighting a fire about 80 miles southwest of Rapid City, S.D. The terrain of the crash site is “very, very rugged, straight up and straight down cliffs,” said Frank Maynard, the Fall River County emergency management director.
Military officials declined to say whether anyone was killed, but they confirmed there were some crew members who were being treated for serious injuries at a hospital in Rapid City.
The family of Lt. Col. Paul Mikeal of Mooresville, N.C., said they were told early Monday that he had died in the crash. They said he was a 42-year-old married father of two and a veteran of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
AP writers Paul Foy, Keith Ridler, Michael Biesecker and Blake Nicholson contributed to this report.
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