Peterson AFB hosts aerial wildfire training
More than 300 people from the Air National Guard, Air Force Reserve Command, and the U.S. Forest Service are in the middle of a week-long aerial firefighting training program at Peterson Air Force Base to prepare for the upcoming wildfire season.
The training will prepare MAFFS members in their goal to slow and stop the spread of wildfires across the country. MAFFS stands for Modular Airborne Fire Fighting Systems, which are portable fire retardant delivery mechanisms and can be inserted into military C-130 aircraft.
The goal of MAFFS has been for the military to provide additional resources to boost wildfire suppression efforts when commercial tankers are not available. The C-130 requires extensive training before deployment to a fire. I asked pilot, Lt. Col. Ralph Fleming, why this week of training is important.
“The challenge is that we’re at the edge of the performance envelope of this aircraft and we’re flying low and very slow,” he said. “There’s a whole host of what if’s, what do you do, where do you go, how do you handle it. So that is part of the training that we do.”
Safety is the number one priority. Protecting people on the ground and in the air. And with so many moving parts, communication between departments is key.
Kim Christensen, Deputy Assistant Director of Operations for Fire and Aviation Management U.S.D.A. Forest Service, explained.
“It is truly an interagency effort. As we know, a fire will start on one agency and quickly move onto another. So we have worked for decades on these interagency partnerships, between local governments, state governments and the Federal government — so it’s one fight one team,” Christensen said.
