HELENA — If you live in Montana, you’ve probably seen a DC-10 Tanker flying in the sky on its way to help put out wildfires. MTN got an inside view of the plane and spoke to a pilot who helps mitigate wildfires.
In just 20 seconds, the DC-10 Tanker can drop a line of retardant that can help stop a fire. For a ground crew to create a similar type of barrier it could cost copious amounts of machinery, people, and hours.
“Fighting fire without aerial assets would not be good. There would be a lot more big fires and a lot more, unfortunately, a lot more devastation,” says Matthew McNamara, an air tanker pilot.
This tanker is one of four owned and operated by the company, 10 Tanker. During the nation’s fire season, the plane and its crew operate in the country in states such as Montana, Idaho, and California.
When the fire season dies down here they work internationally in countries such as Mexico, Chile, and Australia.
McNamara is one of the pilots that flies within 300 feet of the ground and utilizes the plane’s capacity to drop 84,000 pounds of fire retardant to help stop wildfires.
“There is a shift in the way the aircraft behaves. You can't just drop that amount of weight without having some effect, aerodynamic effect, on the aircraft. It's a little bit like wrestling an alligator,” says McNamara.
So far this 2024 fire season this tanker has gone through more than one million gallons of fire retardant and served 126 missions.
McNamara’s been in the cockpit for 35 years, 22 of those flying commercially. The DC-10 that McNamara flies once served as a commercial plane.
McNamara says that serving as an air tanker pilot provides a sense of satisfaction of preserving life and property that he can see the immediate effects of.
“It's much more of a sense of satisfaction to be able to look over your shoulder and see a line of retardant that you just dropped that's settled right exactly where they asked it to be. And it's really gratifying when you come back over a fire that maybe you worked on the week before and you see the retardant, the fire has burned right up to the retardant line and stopped. That's really, it's almost instant gratification when you look over and see that you just did something really good,” says McNamara.
These planes are tools used by those fighting fire on the ground to help mitigate the spread of wildfires. They are not a fix all and are chosen based on the size of the fire in relation to the type of plane.
“The air tankers are just a tool, and if you don't have the boots on the ground, if you don't have the firefighters on the ground, we're never going to put out a fire. You know, either mother nature puts the fire out on her own or the boots on the ground get a handle on it and put it out,” says McNamara.
