In the countryside outside Malvern is a tan metal hangar with 15 airplanes positioned nearby. The hangar is the base for air-attack operations.
Perhaps not as dramatic as the name sounds, the fleet of planes of the Arkansas Forestry Commission at the Malvern Municipal Airport in Hot Spring County is a vital part of the state’s battle against forest fires. The pilots of the Forestry Commission, based at the airport, fly almost daily, inspecting The Natural State’s valuable woodlands.
“We fly routes of 200 to 350 miles a day over the entire state, not only looking for forest fires,” said Michael Sellers, aviation manager for the Forestry Commission. “We are also checking the trees for signs of insect damage or disease, and for timber damage after storms.”
Talking from the airport on Monday, Sellers said there had only been one flight that day — a test flight to check out a plane after some maintenance had been completed — but flights are expected to increase in a few days, perhaps by the end of the week.
“Things get very busy during our two fire seasons during the year,” said Adriane Barnes, public information coordinator for the Forestry Commission. “One season is in the winter, and the other is from August through October. It is about two weeks later this year because of all the rain we have gotten over the year.”
She said that while the humidity has been over 40 percent, reducing the chances of a forest fire, the recent heat is drying the trees, and fire-detection flights could begin any day.
There are flights almost every day that cover a lot of purposes for the timber industry, Barnes said. Whenever the pilots are up, they are always looking for the signs of wildfires.
The planes flown by the forestry pilots are usually high-wing Cessna aircraft that provide the best visibility of the ground below. Seller said the flights can last for hours.
‘Typically, the first flights leave about noon to 1 p.m., then go until 5 or 6 p.m.,” he said. “When it gets busy, the detection flights can start as early as 8 a.m. and go until dark. The planes are up the whole time unless they need more fuel, or there might be a break for lunch.”
Every year, the flights allow pilots to check for signs of the Southern pine beetle, and in years past, they flew looking for signs of the oak borer over the forests of Arkansas.
There are eight districts designated by the Arkansas Forestry Commission, and from their central location in Malvern, four full-time pilots are on duty to take to the air, Barnes said. The state’s air-dispatch communications operation is also in Malvern.
“Each pilot is an experienced pilot with a commercial certificate,” she said. “Last year they spent 572 hours in the air detecting wildfires and flying other timber missions.”
Sellers said the fliers stay on their routes unless they sight smoke that might be a fire. Then, he said, the pilots will make a quick turn to fly over the area and assess the situation. Sellers is one of the pilots, but as manager, he said it is unfortunate that he is always the last to take to the air.
“If a fire is sighted, the pilots report back to the AFC dispatch in Malvern, and an air-attack plane is sent to the area,” Barnes said. “The pilot can look around and determine if there are any homes or buildings in danger near the fire.
The twin-engine Aero Commander air-attack planes, flown by the same pilots, are the strategists for fighting the fires, she said. The pilots, usually flying at around 2,000 feet, often call in ground units such as local fire departments to handle the blaze or the department’s fire-boat units if the fires are hard to reach by road but can be reached by a river or lake.
For larger and even more remote forest fires, the air-attack planes work in partnership with the air tankers.
“The air tankers are responsible for actually dropping water strategically in wildfire suppression,” Barnes said. “The air-attack planes coordinate the drops so they are both effective and efficient.”
The air-tanker planes are either Air Tractors or Dromader planes with single engines and are not flown by Forestry Commission personnel, but are contracted to be available during the fire seasons. The tankers are based at the Memorial Field Airport in Hot Springs.
“They are there because of the availability of hangar space, ” Barnes said. “I don’t think there is room for them at Malvern.”
The tankers normally fly at around 2,000 feet, Barnes said, but may drop as low as 60 feet above the tree line when dropping water onto a wildfire.
While the job is routine and the pilots are skilled and experienced, flying is still a dangerous business at times.
On Jan. 31, Jake Harrell, a part-time pilot for the Forestry Commission who was also a member of the Arkansas Air Guard and the North Little Rock Police Department, took off from the Malvern Airport about 12:40 p.m. on a routine fire-detection flight over the Ouachita National Forest, according to a report by the National Transportation Safety Board.
About 23 minutes later, the pilot told Forestry Commission dispatchers that he was 20 minutes from the first checkpoint, but “he was turning back due to low ceilings,” the report states. He radioed that he was west of Oden a few minutes later; then no one heard from him again.
Having missed a scheduled check-in, a ground and air search was started. Joined by local, state and federal personnel, the Forestry Commission began one of the state’s largest searches, but it was often hampered by a series of winter storms.
On Feb. 1, the orange stripes of the Forestry Commission plane were sighted by an Arkansas Civil Air Patrol flight. The federal report on the crash states that the airplane had hit trees on a ridgeline at 1,473 feet, higher than the detection flights’ usual altitude. The main wreckage was discovered south of the ridge.
“Some people have been asking lately if it wouldn’t be better to use drones that can operate at the same altitude,” Barnes said, “but on detection flights, the pilots are invaluable because of their firefighting training and the experience to evaluate the situation.”
If the heat continues and the rains hold off, Sellers said, the pilots based in Malvern will be busy this time next week.
Staff writer Wayne Bryan can be reached at (501) 244-4460 or wbryan@arkansasonline.com.