CAL FIRE calls on world’s largest aerial firefighting tanker to combat fire near Lake Oroville in Northern California; its first deployment in U.S.
The Global SuperTanker has been activated to fight quickly spreading fire in Northern California. The world’s newest and largest aerial firefighting tanker recently went into action after the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) exercised its call with the SuperTanker to fight the Ponderosa Fire, 10 miles east of Lake Oroville.
The SuperTanker was at McClellan Air Base in Sacramento after recently completing ‘carding’ by CAL FIRE. It received federal firefighting certification last month. This is the plane’s first deployment in the United States.
“It’s an honor to work on behalf of the people and state of California as they face yet another potentially devastating wildfire,” said Jim Wheeler, President and CEO of Global SuperTanker Services, LLC, “We are confident the unsurpassed firefighting ability of the Global SuperTanker will be a tremendous asset for CAL FIRE and its team on the ground as they suppress the Ponderosa Fire. CAL FIRE has long believed in and supported the SuperTanker; we will work tirelessly with them to get the job done in Ponderosa or wherever fire threatens our fellow citizens.”
“We take our responsibility to assess this new tool during the interim approval process very seriously,” said Chief Dave Teter, CAL FIRE’s Deputy Director of Fire Protection, “Our incident commanders will continue to look for opportunities to evaluate the 747 in real world, battlefield conditions as part of this process just as we did with the DC-10 when this type of Very Large Airtanker technology was first introduced.”
While this is the first time the Global SuperTanker has been deployed in the U.S., it was previously called upon to combat fires in Israel over Thanksgiving of 2016, and was in Chile for three weeks in January and February of 2017. While in Chile, the SuperTanker set a world record for liquid dropped by a land-based very large aerial tanker in a single day at 134,400 gallons. The plane was credited with saving people and homes, and the crew received awards and recognition from the Chilean Red Cross for their work in Chile.
