The guys flying the air support are the ones that work really hard.

There was a film clip of one of the Super Scooper aircraft flying some 30-40 feet above the fire before a drop....THAT gave me goosebumps.

The Super Scooper is a plane that skims/lands on a body of water. The pilot opens up the vents on the belly of the plane and that fills up the tanks.
He takes off, flies over the fire and drops the water.

We also have three different kinds of helicopters.

The Firehawk in the pic above and the older Huey/UH1 kind of copter.

The Huey can either land and get the tank filled or use a basket hung under neath to dip and fill from any body of water.

The last copter is called the Ericsson Sky crane.

That is a heavy lifting copter that is used in construction, logging and firefighting.

It looks like and insect and has a long tube it can drop into a body of water and fill up it's tank.

That is the funniest looking craft of all. The tube is located halfway back of the craft and does not retract- so as it flies around it looks like it's dragging something!



We also have strike crews - they are low level prisoners who volunteer to do fire fighting duties for credit on their sentences.