Due to the statewide drought, fire season in San Benito County and the surrounding Bay Area began months earlier than normal this year.
As a result, Cal-Fire pilots, firefighters and staff returned to the Hollister Air Attack Base in April and say they are already busy combating wild fires. Since 1962, Cal-Fire has maintained an Air Attack Base during the summer fire season at the south end of the Hollister Municipal Airport on land leased from the City of Hollister.
The Hollister base is one of 12 Cal-Fire Air Attack Bases across the state that coordinate with each other and other fire agencies to stop wildfires in their tracks. During the summer and into the fall, the staff stationed at the base becomes a kind of pit crew for aircraft responding to uncontrolled fires so that they can refuel and quickly return to the effort at hand.
The efforts at the Hollister base support Cal-Fire’s larger goal of, “Stopping 95 percent of wildfires at 10 acres or less,” said Hollister Air Attack Base Battalion Chief Joshua Nettles, “Every year we’ve succeeded in that goal.”
Cal-Fire bases are strategically placed across the state so that pilots and firefighters can respond to wildfires in their area of responsibility in 20 minutes or less. The staff in Hollister is responsible for 3.1 million acres spanning 11 counties from Monterey to Contra Costa County.
On a day-to-day basis, the Air Attack Base staff includes two pilots, one air attack officer, one base manager and three firefighters. The base owns one air tanker (a plane loaded with flame retardant that drops the liquid onto fires), has another air tanker available on contract, and one air attack platform aircraft, used as an air traffic controller in the sky with the duty of coordinating the actions of all aircraft involved in a given situation.
Cal-Fire’s Hollister Air Attack Base opened on April 1 this year and was fully staffed by April 27. In more normal years, the base wouldn’t re-open until June 1 and would close around Oct. 31. Nettles said he doesn’t know when the base will close for the winter this year but last fire season, “We stayed opened all winter and were only closed for three weeks.”
Since April, Hollister staff has battled at least one fire per day, according to Nettles, sometimes as many as five fires in a single day.
“We’ve definitely seen an increase [in fires] over the last few years,” Nettles added, explaining that the Hollister base has already been busier than this time last year.
This includes a recent fire in Pinnacles National Park that burned 10 acres as well as multiple grass fires in the Altamont Pass and small fires north of Salinas.
A typical day for Cal-Fire staff at the Hollister base starts at 10 a.m. and includes a 10:30 a.m. briefing covering details about the day’s weather conditions as well as which aircraft in the Cal-Fire system are online and which are out for maintenance. After the briefing, staff typically works on maintenance and mixes batches of fire retardant while waiting for word of fires that require their response.
The goal is for staff to be able to get any aircraft that lands at the base, “Off the ground in less than five minutes,” Nettles said.
In this respect the Hollister base can function like a race pit for firefighting aircraft, said Jonathan Pangburn, an information officer with Cal-Fire. Staff on the ground makes sure that retardant is available and planes are reloaded so they can get straight back to work.
After all, “You never know where a fire will happen,” Pangburn said, nor do pilots and firefighters at Hollister know when they might be called to help fight fires in other parts of the state as well.
The public can help Cal-Fire fight fires this summer by keeping at least 100 feet around homes free of dry vegetation that can become fuel for flames, Pangburn remarked. This is known as “defensible space” and protects structures in the event of a wild fire.
It is also important for the public to create a plan before an emergency occurs, Pangburn added, by identifying important documents ahead of time and talking with family about an escape route and designated meeting point. This is the “Ready” portion of Cal-Fire’s fire safety slogan, “Ready, Set, Go.” “Set” refers to practice of the plan prior to actually experiencing a fire.
These actions on the part of the public, “Make it easier for us,” Nettles said, because, “Lives are most important [in a fire].”