Evergreen’s Firefighting B747 Sees First Real Test In Alaska

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Evergreen International’s newly certified B747 firefighting Supertanker can reach a fire at speeds near 600 mph, slow down, and then drop more than 20,000 gallons of payload on it – and the company hopes to put it to work in Alaska to do just that this week. This wildfire attack is a first for Evergreen, which has deployed the freshly certified aircraft to perform a combination water/retardant drop on the Railbelt Complex fire as a demonstration at no cost to the Alaska Forestry Division. The fire has already burned more than 300,000 acres and there are at least 70 other active fires in the state, according to Fairbanks’ Daily News-Miner. Alaskan officials are greeting the aircraft with hope and scepticism. “It has some limitations because of its size and bulk, however it does bring to the table a lot of retardant or water at any one particular time, so we can make some longer fire lines,” Steve Elwell, Division of Forestry aviation supervisor told KTUU news. With the Supertanker, those lines can be as wide as a football field and three miles long. But that capability comes at a cost.

Evergreen estimates the aircraft’s operating costs at roughly $3 million per month and some in Alaska fear it may prove too expensive to operate. California may have a different take as, according to Evergreen, forestry officials have signed a contract to use the plane there. Evergreen’s Supertanker uses a pressurized dispersion system designed to allow it to make multiple drops per flight. It can dispense its load as an aerosolized mist or a deluge … or anything in between. Because of the quantity of the payload, Evergreen says it can drop successfully from a higher altitude, making the Supertanker a safer platform for fighting fires at night, when firefighting conditions are often more advantageous. The extra altitude and higher drop volume may also help counter the large aircraft’s relative lack of agility when flying in mountainous terrain.

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