Columnist Benjamin Grove: Give our airborne firefighters safe planes

Benjamin Grove

Friday, Dec. 13, 2002 | 4:59 a.m.

LAST SUMMER Nevada pilot Steven Wass was whiling his days away as he often did: fighting a wildland fire from the cockpit of a C-130A air tanker.

Wass, 42, loved the adventure of the job, swooping down low and racing off after a drop.

"He used to say it was the last of the true flying you could do," said Jeff Wass of Gardnerville, Steven's brother. "He said it was as close to being a World War II pilot as you could get. When we think back on it we think he did it for the thrill."

On June 17 Wass and two crewmen were working a blaze in the Sierras near Walker, Calif. Wass had been a pilot since he was 16 years old, when he took flying lessons with money he made working in a gravel pit. He was up to the job. His plane wasn't.

The 45-year-old aircraft -- a government rental from the private Wyoming contractor Wass worked for -- had long since been abandoned by the Air Force and fitted for fire service.

Wass had just dropped a red cloud of fire retardant when the C-130's wings fell off. Within four seconds, Wass and his two crewmen were dead.

The National Transportation Safety Board is still finalizing its investigation. But its preliminary report confirms what a videotape of the crash made obvious: The plane "broke apart in flight."

A month later another air tanker crashed as it battled a blaze in Colorado. And there have been other crashes in the last few years.

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., a former Air Force pilot who has both flown C-130s and served as a crash investigator, and other lawmakers last summer demanded the federal firefighting agencies investigate their whole aerial firefighting program.

The results are in. According to a 60-page report released this month by a five-member blue-ribbon panel, the two air tanker crashes were predictable. Gibbons called the report "scathing." The probe's first of eight findings: The safety record of the aging planes and helicopters used to fight fires is "unacceptable."

The report found that safety standards for contractor planes are lower than standards for government planes, and that there are few checks and balances to assure the aging planes are safe to fly. The report said the Federal Aviation Administration certifies but doesn't inspect or test planes.

And the whole culture, structure and management of the federal agencies that share firefighting duties are "ill-suited" to oversee safe aerial firefighting, the report said.

The report prompted federal officials this month to ban use of the remaining 11 C-130s and PB4Y-2s -- one-fourth of the nation's air tanker fleet.

That shouldn't be the final solution.

Aircraft should continue to be a vital part of wildland firefighting, but the government needs to figure out how to make the program safer. Congress should tackle some complex problems.

One problem is that contractors are not paid enough to fly safer planes. Steven Wass had complained that his boss, a Wyoming contractor, relied on the pilots to help maintain the planes, with no full-time mechanic. The government should do more of its own inspections, but it also should make mechanic inspections part of the contract and then pay the contractors for that, Jeff Wass said.

Congress should take all the findings in the blue-ribbon panel report seriously when it reconvenes in January.

In advance of next year's fire season, lawmakers should demand, as the report recommends, that federal agency staffers, aircraft contractors and state officials raise their safety standards for aerial firefighting.

And lawmakers should spend money to contract for newer, better planes -- or buy new government ones. The agencies can start by not wasting cash on expensive maintenance. Some planes are just too beat up to fly, Gibbons added. "That's why the military puts them in the bone yard," he said.

If firefighters are willing to fly into flames, Congress and U.S. taxpayers should be willing to find them the safest planes money can buy.