They look like airplanes a child might build with Legos, or scribble with red and yellow crayons. They are boxy and potbellied, maybe because they are basically flying boats with really long wings. Their cartoon-worthy name — Super Scoopers — belies their serious mission as aerial firefighters.
As these Super Scoopers have been swooping onto Blue Mesa Reservoir this week to skim up tank loads of water, they have become the darlings of selfie-grabbing passersby wowed by this part of the aerial arsenal battling the 4,000-plus acres of flames scorching the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.
Not to downplay the dangerous, destructive and disruptive nature of wildfires — especially one estimated to deliver a $34 million hit to a local economy — but a bit of colorful firefighting flair seems to be a welcome diversion from the angry-looking belches and billows of smoke piling up over ridges of the Black Canyon.
“We’re all 12 years old at heart. We never really grow up,” said David Russell, an avid aviation photographer and former commercial pilot from Crested Butte who was one of those lining up along the reservoir to capture images of the Super Scooper this week.
“I’ve not seen these planes a lot, well, actually, not at all, and here they are in my backyard,” enthused another Super Scooper watcher, Peter Barth of Montrose.
Pilot Scott Blue, who is the captain at the controls of one of the Super Scoopers owned by Bozeman, Montana-based Bridger Aerospace, said sometimes the work of aerial firefighting in a Super Scooper can feel a bit like an air show.
“We come in the first time and there might be two cars along the lake and as we make more passes it will eventually be like an air show with people lined up,” Blue said.
Not that he has much time to watch the watchers or mug for the cameras.
Flying the Super Scooper — otherwise known as the CL-415 EAF — requires a tricky bit of piloting.
The Scoopers have supersized rudders, elevators and ailerons that help them maneuver over water and slow down to 100 mph for the 12 seconds needed to force 1,400 gallons of water up into the plane’s two fiberglass tanks. The Scoopers must climb back to altitude with their heavy loads within minutes.
The 30,000-pound planes with wings nearly as long as a Boeing 737’s take on 6 tons of water through two vents in the underside of the plane that are surprisingly smaller than toasters.
Blue jackknifes his hands rapidly here and there in the cockpit as he runs through all the switch flipping, knob pulling, and lever turning required just to prepare to execute a scoop. It is all called “a bomb check.”
A satisfying plume of steam
Unloading the water loads requires a whole other checklist before the pilot and co-pilot can push the “water drop” buttons that will eject a downpour through two large hatches in the plane’s bottom.
The Super Scooper ideally needs to be between 100 to 150 feet above the terrain to be most effective at calming hotspots. Either a pilot in a supervisory plane or a firefighter on the ground directs the Scooper pilots to optimal drop spots.
Blue said it is satisfying to see steam rise from the burning canopy when they hit a 100-foot-by-400-foot area with water that just minutes earlier was home to big-mouth bass and Kokanee salmon.
Within six minutes, the plane can be scooping again. Blue said an average firefighting day can include about 40 scoops. His personal best day was 90 scoops.
Even veteran firefighters can be wowed by the air show quality of the Super Scoopers doing their job. They turn heads whenever they show up. Blue said fire departments will often ask to come and see the Scoopers.
“The first time I saw a Super Scooper I was one of those people freaking out with excitement, said Kristie Thompson, a public information officer with the Incident Command Center for the South Rim Fire.
Audrey Hughes, the air operator branch manager on the South Rim Fire, raved to a crowd of 150 at a public meeting this week that the eye-catching Super Scoopers are “an awesome firefighting tool.”
The Super Scoopers might be new to the Western Slope, but they have been around longer than iPhones.
Blue has been piloting water-bombers since 2011 in an era when they still had piston engines before those were replaced by turbine engines.
Engineers and aviators have been monkeying around with the idea of the Super Scoopers since the mid-1940s when a Canadian fitted a water tank on a seaplane. He made three drops before the idea was abandoned.
In 1950, the dropping of actual water bombs was also discarded when the 35-pound bags of water shot from a plane on a re-jiggered beer conveyor belt proved to be ineffective for fighting fires. It also posed a serious threat to anyone on the ground.
Crop dusting to flame dousing
Crop-spraying biplanes made up the first operational aerial water bombing fleet in the U.S. in 1956. But, with their single 170-gallon tanks, they were a far cry from the $30 million Super Scoopers that Bridger rents to the U.S. Forest Service for fighting the Black Canyon and other fires.
Bridger has six of the Scoopers that are called out to fires across the country. Worldwide, there are now about 160 water bomber planes used for firefighting.
Blue is quick to point out that the Scoopers are simply support for the boots-on-the-ground firefighters (there are about 400 on the South Rim fire), and work in tandem with the slurry tankers, the fixed-wing light aircraft, and the water scooping and sucking helicopters.
That means there can be a lot of waiting time on the tarmac before an incident commander decides there is terrain in need of Scooper drops.
And that is why his plane holds a go-bag with his personal travel items, and a cooler with lunches next to a yellow bag holding a life raft — a reminder the Super Scooper is certified as both a boat and a plane.
“We basically move into the planes when we are on a shift,” said the 6-foot-7-inch Blue, who must hunch to walk through the plane’s interior.
The crews — pilots, maintenance engineers, Forest Service aviation specialist Kelly Calihan and her sidekick support dog, Mavis — must be ready to pick up and go across the country, from Alaska to Louisiana, on quick notice to fly or follow the red and yellow scene-stealers.
Stickers on the inside of the Scoopers’ doors attest to the roving nature of their firefighting work — “Min,” “Wash,” “The Republic of California,” “Arn’s BBQ” — are among them. Their only real restriction on where they can help fight fires is a proper body of water. They need about a mile of obstruction-free water for the scooping maneuver.
Colorado’s largest lake has that in spades. The west end of Blue Mesa along U.S. 50 has been closed to watercraft for the duration of the Scoopers’ work, giving the planes plenty of room to do their firefighting work — and to put on their show.
