Lick Fire - Sept 2007

We'd been working in our wildland fire fighting gear because it was quite hot, and because all we were doing was hosing down landing pads. But this was more serious. So we changed into our bunker gear and got our engine ready to do whatever was needed.

There were two engines working on the crash/rescue team, and we spread ourselves out so that if things went bad, the flying debris from a crashing helicopter would be unlikely to take us both out. Then we waited, watching in the direction of the fire, for it to return.

Soon it came into view, flying very low, with it's bucket just above the trees. There was no obvious problem, and it landed as if nothing was wrong, carefully putting the bucket down in front of the landing pad and settling down behind it.

We relaxed and watched while the pilot and support crew spent the rest of the day working on something in the rotor, as you can see in this picture.

Eventually they few a test flight, landed again (with no report of any problem), and then, finally flew off to a local airport for the night. I never learned what problem it had encountered.