Topic: Chimney Fire, SLO County CA

[SLOweather]

This fire started Saturday afternoon. The high temps and erratic winds have not helped. Currently at 5,400 acres, 10% containment.

Lots of good info at https://facebook.com/SLOStringer and https://twitter.com/SLOStringer plus other sites if you are interested.

Most afternoons around 4 or 5 I kill +/- an hour and a glass of wine out in the Think Tank, er, hot tub, and watch planes fly over. The last couple of days, I've seen an odd jet, low and slow, white over orange, go right over our house from the SW and turn north. No visible markings underneath, and I can't see the tail.

Finally, I noticed the pod on the belly and figured out is was one of the DC-10 tankers fighting the Chimney fire out of the Santa Maria Airport.

Here's a link to a SLOStringer tweet with some awesome footage of Tanker 911 making a run yesterday... from ABOVE the drop!

https://twitter.com/SLOStringer/stat...80559976079360

[CW2274]

When I worked in the Bay we called them "boray bombers", except they weren't using DC-10's yet, they were mostly old retired military P2V's.

[corwyyn]

Link to the video gets me an error saying the page doesn't exist but going to the link for their twitter feed I was able to scroll down and find the video.  I feel for everyone in that area, when we have fires they tend to be up and away from the densely populated areas. 

[W3DRM]

When I worked in the Bay we called them "boray bombers", except they weren't using DC-10's yet, they were mostly old retired military P2V's.

Just a question/correction. You mention "boray bombers", I've always heard of them as "borax bombers"...

[CW2274]

When I worked in the Bay we called them "boray bombers", except they weren't using DC-10's yet, they were mostly old retired military P2V's.

Just a question/correction. You mention "boray bombers", I've always heard of them as "borax bombers"...

In ATC, we referred of them that way. I honestly don't remember if the general public did or not, that was a while ago.

[W3DRM]

Ahhh sorry, I was wrong. I meant to type "borate bombers". Early on, they used a mixture of a borate w/water in a slurry for the drops. As I remember it, the use of borate was found to sterilize the soil and be harmful to animals so they stopped using it. That was many years ago. I don't know what the mixture is today but I think it includes seed and a fertilizer that helps to rejuvenate the soil and minimize erosion after the fire.

[CW2274]

As you can see, I had it spelled wrong.

[SLOweather]

Here's a history of "borate bombers".

http://earlyaviators.com/enolta7.htm

Initially, plain water was used as the fire suppressant. However, it was soon discovered that most of the water evaporated before reaching the fire, so the practice was adopted of adding chemicals to the water to inhibit evaporation. Borate was one of the first chemicals used, hence the derivation of the term "borate bomber."

Interestingly, even the DC-10s don't show up on Flightradar24. I thought maybe the fire was out of range of their crowdsourced receivers, but Tanker 911 just went over our house and crossed the SBP pattern and nada.

[CW2274]

Interestingly, even the DC-10s don't show up on Flightradar24. I thought maybe the fire was out of range of their crowdsourced receivers, but Tanker 911 just went over our house and crossed the SBP pattern and nada.

I've been out of the business for 5+ years, so don't take this as gospel now, but most likely accurate. Practically all aircraft now have transponders that allow ATC to see the aircraft with much more detailed info, instead of just a raw radar paint. Tankers (and many other specialty aircraft) use a particular transponder beacon code that normal aircraft don't. The tracker you use probably ignores or is not authorized to "see" it.

[W3DRM]

My understanding is that some flights can be blocked so they don't appear on FlightRadar24 or other non-official ATC equipment. ATC simply blocks those transponder codes they don't want to be visible to the public. I suspect that this is done for many "special" or "sensitive" aircraft flights. ATC most certainly would still have visibility but not the general public.

[SLOweather]

We're into day 11, I think, of this fire. Currently at almost 41,000 acres, 39% contained, 45 homes destroyed, 333 engines, 61 water tenders,  17 helicopters, 7 air tankers, 107 hand crews, 44 dozers, 4,106 total personnel.

This picture from Amanda Graning's https://twitter.com/agraning twitter feed. Amanda was the Incident Meteorologist on this fire and has been in CA for 11 days, headed home to Duluth NWS today.



The fire has come within 2.5 miles of Hearst Castle.