Hundreds more evacuate from wildfires as investigation into air tanker crash continues

Wednesday, June 19, 2002 | 3 a.m.

Hundreds more people were forced to flee wildfires that have charred nearly a half-million acres across the West as the owner of an air tanker that suddenly broke up and plunged to the ground said the plane had been repaired four years ago for cracks on one wing.

Investigators on Tuesday tried to learn what caused the air tanker's wings to snap off before the fuselage spiraled into the ground in the Sierra Nevada town of Walker, Calif.

All three crew members were killed in the fiery explosion, a signal of how dangerous the fire season might be this year.

The crash resulted in the grounding of all C-130A firefighting aircraft in the United States.

"At the start of the drop, everything appeared normal," said George Petterson, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, who added that he'd never heard of such a double wing failure happening to a C-130A before.

The crash occurred as air tankers and helicopters were helping more than 700 firefighters on the ground battle a Sierra foothills fire that by Wednesday had blackened at least 15,000 acres and threatened the rustic mountain hamlet of Walker.

The blaze was one of many fires burning in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Utah that have charred nearly a half-million acres of paper-dry forest and brush. Thousands of people have been forced to flee and more than 60 homes have been destroyed, most of them in Colorado.

Federal forest officials say more than 1.5 million acres have burned across the country in 2002 - nearly twice the 10-year average for this time of year.

In Colorado, about 2,000 people were forced to evacuate Tuesday as a 120,000-acre fire continued to blacken the wooded hillsides southwest of Denver. With the new evacuations, 7,500 people remained away from their homes.

The fire, the largest of three major Colorado fires that burned more than 163,000 acres of forest and brush, was allegedly set by Forest Service worker Terry Barton, who faces charges in federal court. Her claim that she started the fire while burning a letter from her estranged husband has sparked suspicion among prosecutors.

As in other parts of the country, unpredictable winds and hot weather were hampering firefighters in Colorad.

"This fire is so powerful it dictates the wind. First it sucks it in, and then pushes it out," firefighter Mat Wood said.

The windy weather sent smoke pouring into Denver, where authorities warned the young, elderly and those with respiratory ailments to stay inside.

But the top firefighting priority in the Rocky Mountain region was a 38,000-acre blaze in southwestern Colorado that prompted the evacuation of more than 1,700 homes in the Durango area and destroyed at least 10.

Other fires burning around the country included a 100,000-acre blaze in Alaska's interior. It was started May 22 by firecracker shotgun shells fired by a biologist to scare off a charging moose.

A few hours before fiery air tanker crash, three firefighters in Southern California were injured when flames leaped over their fire truck in the Cajon Pass, 50 miles east of Los Angeles. They were hospitalized with first-degree burns.

"For a few seconds, I thought it was over," firefighter Thomas Lotko, 45, said from his hospital bed where he was hooked to an IV and had his hands and elbows swathed in bandages.

The Mono County, Calif., sheriff's office identified the victims as pilot Steven Wass, 42, of Gardnerville, Nev.; co-pilot Craig Labare, 36, of Loomis,Calif., and crew member Michael Davis, 59, of Bakersfield, Calif.

Still another fire broke out 40 miles north of Los Angeles on Tuesday and quickly spread across 1,000 acres and caused two power lines to overheat and shut down. That in turn prompted a call for power conservation in Southern California.

The owner of the plane that crashed in Walker said company officials notified the Federal Aviation Administration in April 1998 that an inspection discovered two 1-inch cracks in the surface of one of the aircraft's wings.

The damage was repaired and no problems had been reported since, a company employee said Tuesday night. The 46-year-old air tanker passed its last major inspection last fall.

National Interagency Fire Center spokeswoman Nancy Lull said the agency's five remaining C-130As would be grounded for at least two days while their safety is evaluated. They make up only a fraction of the center's fleet of 43 contract planes but are highly valued for their ability to drop large amounts of fire retardant quickly.

Petterson, the NTSB investigator, said he was not aware of the report on the plane's 1998 wing problem, but added it would be reviewed during his agency's investigation.

A preliminary report on the probe should be available next week and a final one a year from now.

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