The Santa Maria Air Tanker Base has reopened to help host the air tankers and other aircraft being sent to aid in the Southern California wildfires.
"We have 4 water scooping aircraft that can carry anywhere from 1,300 gallons to just over 1,600 gallons, and 2 air tankers, a Q400 and an RJ85. The Q400 carries about 2,600 gallons and the RJ carries about 3,000," said Alex Ihle, the Santa Maria Air Tanker Base Air Tactical Group Supervisor.
Normally, January is considered off season for this jet center, but with the fires continuing to burn, they reopened on January 9th, to offer aid.
"It's kind of been a large staging ground for operations in Southern California."
He says typically they only operate from May 15th to November 15th, but were able to get up and running again quickly.
"There's quite a few people here to support the activity in Southern California," said Ihle.
"A lot of these folks are local. So when the call came out, they were able to have staff with in 24 hours the place was up and running. So right now, you know, with our staff on the forest side, plus their staff that's around 30 folks," said Sexton.
The staff does everything from helping to park the planes to mixing and refilling the retardant.
The forest staff will help from the air in the light fixed wing, or air commander plane.
"Generally, aircraft are most effective early, right after ignition, so the effort would be to keep things small and buy time for ground resources to get on scene and engage vegetation fire. Now when there's winds in excess of 40 to 80 mph, its very challenging to be effective with an aircraft," said Ihle.
Although it's the off season, both men say it isn't totally out of the ordinary for them to have to reopen.
"Not uncommon to stay open late in terms of the retardant capability and having aircraft poised for response. But without significant rain in the forecast, the likelihood of keeping aircraft here and additional personnel on sight for the foreseeable future is very high," said Ihle.
Luckily, they say most of the team is happy to come in during the off season, and help anyway they can.
"We're all one team, kind of working for the same cause there," said Sexton.
