High-flying history
The skies over North Idaho are rich in U.S. Forest Service aviation history.
In August 1921, a Curtis biplane owned by the Foster Russell Aviation Co. of Spokane landed at Sandpoint on an advertising “mission” for the Spokane Chamber of Commerce. A Pend Oreille Forest officer, W.C. Laudermilk, hired the plane for a reconnaissance of the hills east of the city. During a 25-mile flight he located seven fires.
The Coeur d’Alene and Potlatch Timber Protective Associations contracted for the first regular aerial fire patrols in this area in 1923, and in 1925 an Army Air Corps squadron flew to North Idaho in World War I planes to look for fires.
The Coeur d’Alene Forest air detection unit was established in 1947, following which 75 percent of the lookout towers in the area were eliminated. The U.S. Forest Service’s aerial detection operation still operates from the Coeur d’Alene Air Terminal/Pappy Boyington Field.
These days North Idaho patrols are normally flown in Cessna 182s, a single-engine aircraft. During the fire season three aircraft are usually available, one for each of the forests – the Coeur d’Alene, Kaniksu and St. Joe – that comprise the Idaho Panhandle National Forests.
Today’s aerial observers pinpoint fires with global positioning units, then radio information on the fire’s size and progress to the interagency fire dispatch center at the Coeur d’Alene Airport. They also guide ground crew into fires. Those crews use signal mirror flashes to show observers their locations.
A low-tech device – a roll of toilet paper – is used to mark fire locations for smokejumpers or jump-off points for ground fire fighters.
In all the years of aerial fire detection flying in North Idaho, there have been only two fatalities. On a late-season patrol flight over the Nez Perce National Forest near Grangeville in the early ‘70s, a pilot and observer were killed while attempting to drop a message to firefighters. They crashed when a wing clipped a snag.
A smokejumper base was established at Coeur d’Alene in 1982 but was decommissioned in 1988. However, during periods of extreme fire danger smokejumpers from the Missoula, Grangeville or North Cascades base at Winthrop, Wash., are still staged locally.
The only smokejumper fatalities in North Idaho occurred on the Nez Perce National Forest in 1959. Two jumpers and the supervisor of the forest died when the Ford Trimotor plane in which they were riding crashed into trees at the end of the Moose Creek Ranger Station runway.
The first drop of fire retardant – water mixed with a powdered substance called borate – in North Idaho was on a 35-acre fire on the St. Joe National Forest in 1959. The aircraft, a World War II-vintage Torpedo Bomber Medium, or TBM, was flown from the air tanker base at Missoula.
The Coeur d’Alene retardant base began operations in 1960. A mixmaster, dispatchers and pilots were responsible for mixing the borate concentrate, loading it onto airplanes and dispatching them to fires. The first regular, permanent buildings at the base were built in 1963.
Aircraft have become vital in the delivery of supplies and personnel to fight fires. The first drop of firefighting supplies in North Idaho was in 1930 when Jack Jost of the Kaniksu National Forest and Lt. Laurie Heral of Bigelow-Johnson Air Service dropped gasoline and oil to pump crews on a 5-acre fire on the St. Joe National Forest. The same day, pioneer Spokane aviator Nick Mamer flew a group of fire foremen from Missoula to a fire near Grangeville.
By 1937 supplies for entire fire camps were being dropped to firefighters. Parachutes have become a valuable piece of firefighting equipment for delivering equipment to the backcountry.
Other forest-related aerial activities also started early in North Idaho. In the 1920s, the first Forest Service aerial photos were snapped here, movies of forest fires were shot from the air, and firefighters were transported by planes.
The Northern Region’s first Forest Service aerial operations officer, Howard Flint, initiated the agency’s experimental work in aerial photography in 1925. By 1939 all the region’s forestlands had been photographed.
Aerial surveys mapped forest insect and disease infestations beginning in the 1930s. Today, the Forest Service’s Forest Health and Pest Management Division flies all National Forest lands annually mapping outbreak areas. The State of Idaho’s Forest Disease section, located in Coeur d’Alene, also flies state and private lands annually.
The Forest Service has also used airplanes for big-game feeding, insect surveys and insecticide spraying. In 1932 a contract plane dropped 3,000 pounds of hay to starving deer on the Coeur d’Alene National Forest. Air patrols of mountainous areas have been used to reduce poaching and check on the condition of game. Salt has been dropped for deer, fish are planted in lakes and streams, and, in 1989, Rocky Mountain goats were transplanted by air from the St. Joe National Forest to an area northwest of Bonners Ferry.
Helicopters have been used in this area for firefighting, spraying, evacuation, cargo and water drops. One of the first uses of helicopters in the management of North Idaho national forests involved spraying blister rust-infected white pine stands on the Coeur d’Alene National Forest’s Magee Ranger District in 1949. Similar operations continued into the mid-1960s.
Aerial platforms are also used to ignite controlled burns. A helitorch is carried in a sling under a helicopter. Fuel consisting of gasoline, diesel and naphtha runs out of the barrel beneath the helicopter and is ignited with an electrode and drops as flaming globules. Much of the testing of the system, developed during the early ‘70s, was done on the Coeur d’Alene National Forest.
Helicopters with enough power to haul water in a suspended bucket came to North Idaho in 1968 and were capable of carrying a 110-gallon fiberglass bucket. Modern buckets are made of collapsible specially-coated cloth and can be adjusted for different capacities depending on helicopter power and ambient air temperature combinations. Modern helitankers carry up to 2,500 gallons of water.
With higher-powered helicopters, cargo net slings are used to transport firefighting gear suspended beneath the ship.
In 1965 tree seedlings from the Coeur d’Alene Forest Service Nursery were the first in the nation flown to remote planting sites and dropped by parachute.