A Port Alberni company is playing a lead role in fighting destructive wildfires in California.
Coulson Group of Companies has its C-130 Hercules, a slow-flying fixed-wing aircraft, on contract to U.S. Forest Services, owner Wayne Coulson said Sunday.
“We were the first aircraft to the Camp Pendleton fire on Wednesday,” said Coulson, who stations firefighting aircraft at nearby San Bernadino.
“We’ve been working that fire right up until [Saturday],” he said.
The plane was then diverted to a fire beside the San Diego freeway “and we dumped a few loads on that,” said Coulson.
“We’re right in the heat of the battle.”
Coulson keeps his aircraft in San Bernardino because it’s within 40-minutes flying time to three large forests in southern California. He’s got a 10-year contract with the USFS.
“That’s our game right now,” said Coulson, who a few years ago had the iconic Hawaii Mars working California wildfires.
Coulson’s C-130 is the only turbo-prop aircraft in the fleet fighting California wildfires. The others are jets which lack the manoeuvrability of the C-130 in mountainous terrain.
“We can go slow and low in the mountains,” Coulson said. “The C-130 is a tactical aircraft — that’s what it’s designed to do.”
That Second World War-vintage Hawaii Mars, the largest waterbomber in the world, is now retired from firefighting and parked alongside the Philippine Mars at Coulson’s base on Sproat Lake near Port Alberni. Talks are in the final stages to find new homes, perhaps in museums, for the old water bombers. They began as troop carriers for the U.S. Navy, then were converted into water bombers and owned by a consortium of forest companies in B.C.
Coulson bought them in 2007 and set the aircraft to work in B.C. and several American states.
Contracts have been hard to secure of late because many jurisdictions are hiring newer, more efficient water bombers.
