Firefighting on the night shift

In addition to search and rescue, marine pilot transfers, and a variety of other charter work, when there are fires to be fought in the middle of the night, Talon Helicopters have the right equipment to intervene. Chief pilot Jarrett Lunn has been with Talon for over 11 years. He explains the positive impact that night vision goggles (NVG) have had in their fire suppression and mitigation operations.

Though we’re based in Vancouver, typically, our Dauphin goes to Alberta for the summer months on a firefighting contract. It’s supported with a truck and trailer, with parts, stores, tools, whatever we need. We’re quite mobile, living with the helicopter away from base for the summer.

Fire finding

In order to do the night-time firefighting and our other night-time operations, whether it’s search and rescue or marine pilot transfers, we need the night-vision goggles to be able to fly into unlit areas at night. They allow us to see where we’re going, what the hazards are and navigate safely, low level at night. We’re not flying high-level instrument routes from airport to airport, we’re down working in the terrain. The goggles let us see the terrain and hazards around us. We can see everything from sticks, trees and ponds. Sometimes you’re looking for a dip site, and the dip site has got a family of moose in there, so you’re going to circle and wait for the moose to clear out before you go in to fill up.?

The pilot wears the night-vision goggles as well as a trained Alberta wildfire crew member, they’re also on goggles so they can assess the fire, the terrain as well, help with GPS programming, radio frequencies and, most importantly, they liaise directly with the province for dispatching in priorities. Whether it’s a member of the public phoning in a fire off the side of the highway, or they have a lightning detection system – so we might get a call from dispatch with coordinates for the most recent lightning strikes – we’ll make sure the active lightning is gone so we’re not flying into the storm. Often, we’re following behind a storm checking on where lightning strikes and looking for new starts.?

Immediate impact

Fires burn day and night. One of the biggest problems lately with climate change: fires are starting earlier in the year. They’re going later in the year. They’re getting bigger quicker. We’re seeing a lot more aggressive fire activity. If a fire starts at sunset, often aircraft can’t touch it for 8 to 10 hours until sunrise in the morning. With NVG we’re able to go immediately to that fire. Initial attack has been a really key focus of the night operations where we try to get on a fire while it’s still small. Once a fire gets up and running and gets to a certain size, they’re just hard to catch. If we can catch them when they’re small, we see a lot of success with that.

On year one of our night-vision firefighting contract with Alberta, the first two weeks were dedicated to training, mostly training for the Alberta wildfire staff so they could get to know the new helicopter and its capabilities. We were on night one of training, and a dispatch came in for a fire roughly 100 nautical miles from our training centre. We loaded up and we took the crew to an actual fire rather than a training fire and put the tool to use. As we were inbound, we started discussing over the radio with the ground teams and it was an interface fire, which means the forest is now burning into the built-up area. There were actually two houses caught in that fire. We were able to help out, working with the local ground crew. We were tanking on the fire. We provided an overhead view of where the fire was going, where it had gone and it was our first night working, supposedly a training night, but it turned into an operational training night! It was one of those ‘aha’ moments, where at the end of the night, we all came home and thought, okay, this is going to be a really good contract. We’re going to do a lot of good here.

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