MONTANA – There are teams fighting fires this season who tackle the flames before they have grown into the expansive blazes we continue to track.
Our team spoke with with Missoula’s DNRC Helitack team about their crucial role in Montana fire season.
DNRC Helitack Pilot, Garth Scott explains their role, “There’s been fires that you don’t hear about, which is kind of our job.”
And Andrew Dale, DNRC Southwest Land Office Area Aviation Officer, told us “It’s one big teamwork. There’s a lot of people, different agencies all working together, both in Montana and throughout the geographic area to make stuff happen.”
This team is focused on quick response and initial attack on wildfires. Their work is state-wide, with teams just like them doing this sort of thing in Kalispell, Helena, and Billings.
They dispatch to newly reported, less than 10-acre fires that pop up, and work to extinguish them using one pilot – maneuvering a helicopter that holds a lot of water – over a 3-5 person boots-on-the-ground team.
“It’s a 324 gallon bucket. It’s a belly hook, so we can go in and out a dip site super fast. . . which is one of our key assets,” explains Scott.
In these emergency situations, Helitack teams have access to any nearby water – and the advantage of helicopters is their ability to access even small water sources like rancher’s ponds.
Communication is key for this team: “Once that call comes in and we’re looking at a ten, ten-minute launch window if everything goes right” says Dale.
Dale says their eyes and ears are always locked into: “Incident commander is kind of in charge of the fire and they order resources as they see fit. And then dispatch and everyone else is working to get the resources moving that way to them.”
“Simply put, you know, we put wet stuff on hot stuff and repeat as necessary,” Scott tells us.
This asset is just one piece of the large team containing fires in Montana and keeping our communities safe this fire season.
