Fighting forest fires using C-130 aircraft equipped with the Modular Airborne Fire Fighting Systems (MAFFS).

Movin' out the MAFFS

On 11 October 1997, the U.S. Secretary of Defense officially tasked the Wyoming Air National Guard (ANG) 153rd Airlift Wing to deploy and provide humanitarian assistance to the Indonesian Government. Its mission: To fight forest fires using C-130 aircraft equipped with the Modular Airborne Fire Fighting Systems (MAFFS).

It took just 66 hours for 47 Wyoming Air National Guard members and three C-130H aircraft, two fitted with MAFFS, to deploy half-a-world away, once they received notice. The Air National Guard members departed from the cold Wyoming winter and flew into a country literally on fire. In addition to the three aircraft, another C-130H aircraft carried nearly 30 tons of spare parts and mission essential equipment to California where it entered the supply system. A C-141 made a stop in Wyoming to shuttle an engine, a propeller and additional mission essential items to Southeast Asia.

According to Col. Robert Rodekohr, 153rd Airlift Wing commander, this was the first time the Wyoming Air National Guard traveled overseas to fight fires. As a result, the unit set a precedent in responding to natural disasters abroad. "This is a natural disaster Indonesia needed support with. Normally, about this time of year the monsoons bring rain to the countryside that is currently burning up. This year these rains didn't come," he explained. "The country is rich in rare, exotic hardwoods. These hardwoods and millions of hectares of forest are burning up as well," he said.

Tools to engage the blazes: people, aircraft and MAFFS

The MAFFS is a self-contained, reusable, liquid dispensing fire fighting system that fits into a C-130 aircraft. The U.S. Forest Service owns the MAFFS units. They are operated by Air National Guard units in Wyoming, California and North Carolina and by an Air Force Reserve unit in Colorado. Col. Rodekohr said that the MAFFS mission is one they know well. It is also one that requires intense concentration and focus due to the rigors of the environment.

"The Wyoming Air National Guard has performed multiple MAFFS missions in California, Arizona and Wyoming's Yellowstone National Park," he said. "From 27 July to 3 September, 1994 the Wyoming Air National Guard flew 389 fire fighting missions, targeting 37 different fires using two MAFFS units. Within one month of being in Indonesia we flew almost half that amount--166 sorties." (One takeoff and landing equals one sortie.)

Col. Rodekohr explained that nature dictates how the air crews approach dropping water onto the fire, or setting a fire line with fire retardant. "The elevation, terrain and weather are all principal players when we are flying the fire fighting missions. The sea level elevation is much different than the high plains elevation in Wyoming," he said.

But there was help in understanding how to outguess the fire and its behavior. Maj. Iver Osborn, an instructor pilot and crew scheduler, said that this is what made this a unique mission. "For the first time we performed the MAFFS mission without U.S. Forest Service lead planes. Normally, a lead plane shows the C-130 how to approach the fire. In Indonesia, we made the initial firefighting missions with the U.S. Forest Service members on board the C-130s," Maj. Osborn explained. "These are the people who are knowledgeable in fire behavior. They guided us throughout the mission in putting out the fires. These fires acted differently than those in the western United States."

Maj. Osborn also noted that from a pilot standpoint, it was by far the most challenging mission he has ever been involved with. "There is nothing like flying 150 feet above ground level in low visibility of haze, smoke, smog and humidity. We love this mission in the ops community because it is the most challenging thing we do; it cut to the heart of true piloting skills," he said. "It's the pilot of the aircraft that puts the fire retardant where it needs to go, with the support of the air and ground crews. It is the hardest mission we do because it takes extra maintenance, man-hours, crew training, and a lot of team effort."

Master Sgt. Mike Sorensen, who is a loadmaster, agrees. He described the mission as a great experience in teamwork in the air, on the ground, and with major commands, despite the environmental concerns and the frustration of dealing with the heat, smoke and the stench of the air, which made it hard on people.

"Normally when we fly MAFFS missions we stick together as one crew, but in Indonesia, we integrated crews to facilitate crew rest." He added that the crews relied heavily on the maintenance support team on the ground.

Chief Master Sgt. (CMS) Tom Steinbach, a Component Repair Branch supervisor, said "The air crews would fly missions about one hour long then would be on the ground 15-20 minutes then back up for another hour, up to several hours a day. In this brief span of time they were on the ground, it was our job to keep the C-130s in flying order. We did that by bringing enough maintenance specialists having dual specialties," he said. He continued, "The MAFFS mission is something where you can see the immediate results. We worked on both the C-130s and MAFFS. We maintained the pumps and kept the units running until the U.S. Forest Service put two people on the ground to take over the MAFFS maintenance," CMS Steinbach said.

As for the overall experience, CMS Steinbach said that they couldn't have worked with better people. "I was thrilled with how friendly the people were. They were very pleasant to work with; the demeanor of the Indonesian people was just delightful. They bent over backward to help us. It really made our work a lot more enjoyable. Both cultures went a long way in furthering relations," he said.

Moreover, because of the relationships that developed, CMS Steinbach said he believes that both the Air National Guard and the Indonesian military learned a great deal.

"We've showed them how to fight these fires. They have learned new fire fighting techniques and they are interested in the MAFFS units themselves. We learned how to fight jungle fires and to work in a warm environment. Any time you have two cultures that are working to battle the same thing, a learning process occurs."

Progress is made

The two MAFFS aircraft and two rotations totaling 96 people made progress despite the long days, unbearable heat, and poor breathing conditions.

The 153rd also flew eight sorties, including two drops, on an urban fire 30 miles south of Jakarta. This was an urgent call to help ground firemen save homes. A call back confirmed that the homes were saved. During another mission they saved a home within 100 feet of a blaze.

On November 2, the 153rd flew eight sorties on South Sumatra, several near Mount Ratal. This area is composed of closed canopies and tropical hard woods. MAFFS drops penetrated the forest canopy and reduced fires by approximately 50 percent. This required genuine ingenuity to secure an adequate airstrip for C-130 operations and the needed water capabilities.

Maj. Mike Exstrom, an instructor pilot who has logged 14 years of MAFFS experience, explained that early on during the mission the unit moved the operation from Jakarta to Surabaya to be closer to most of the fires. While there, they pumped water out of a creek and tested the water to insure its safe use within the MAFFS unit and the aircraft. Although the tests reflected the water was not harmful to use, within a few days crewmembers and maintenance personnel began to notice mineral deposits, similar to salt water, build on the aircraft, but the maintenance personnel worked to keep the aircraft in the air.

What went well--lessons learned

Overall, Maj. Exstrom said the mission went very well. "It seemed well-organized from airplanes, to troops, to getting the things we needed through the Embassy. The Indonesian people were great--very hospitable to Americans," he said.

"The fires covered a vast amount of land. We knew we could do some good to help suppress little fires from becoming big fires. The Australians and Japanese were there assisting as well," he said. In the end, the unit flew 250 sorties and logged 316.5 flying hours. This unit from a state with a population of 400,000 assisted a nation of 200 million in saving tropical rain forests and homes.

In a 5 December 1997 letter, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense H. Allen Holmes summed it up: "Your close coordination with the U.S. embassy and the Indonesian Government and military ensured success throughout the period of this endeavor. Your assistance has protected lives, saved homes and villages, limited damage to endangered species and helped prevent further expansion of the fires."

"I am amazed, why are the Americans here?" asked Wolas Krenak a reporter from the Suara Pembaruan daily, watching a wildfire fighting demonstration by a U.S. Air Force C-130 Hercules water bomber at the Indonesian Air Force base, Halim Perdana Kusumah, near East Jakarta city.

"Why must you say that?" asked another fellow next to him. "Because there is a confrontation with Washington since the Jakarta government cancelled its purchase of U.S. F-16 fighter jets and backed out of a U.S. military training program due to criticism of Indonesian human rights by the United States Congress," said Krenak.

"I think this is a different case. The wildfire is not only a national problem, also not regional, but a world environmental disaster if it is not solved quickly," comments a third person joining the conversation. "After all, it's not easy for the government to stop the wildfires because of poor visibility. Our forest is so huge. I think the world is confronted with the El Niño weather phenomenon, and we have to put aside the (political) confrontation," said the latter.

At the time, forest fires in Kalimantan and Sumatra raged out of control and covered the Southeast Asia region with a blanket of smog, with extensive health and economic consequences.

The unpredictable El Niño effect, resulting from a shift in water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, made matters worse. Environmental scientists predicted that the 1997-98 El Niño was so intense that it was hard to see rainfall patterns in the Western Pacific region being normal or above normal for months. The El Niño effect, occurring every two to seven years, causes wide-ranging climate changes worldwide and even reverses normal patterns, causing floods in some areas and droughts in others, including Southeast Asia.

In a normal year, monsoon rains would be expected to douse the forest fires and clear the smog out of the air. But in this situation, the worst Indonesian droughts in half a century devastated the forests in Sumatra and Kalimantan, as smoke haze from wildfires thickened over parts of the world's fourth most populous nation. The drought made many parts of Indonesia tinder dry, giving fuel to hundreds of fires.

The wildfires, which filled the skies with smoke across Indonesia as well as neighboring Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei and parts of the Philippines, caused millions of dollars in damage. Unlike the pollution of most modern cities in Southeast Asia, caused by traffic and heavy industry, the cloud of smoke that engulfed the area was caused by burning tracts of bush and forests in Sumatra and Kalimantan. The indigenous forest people use fire to clear the land for farming by tradition. In this situation, however, environmentalists estimate that nearly 1.7 million hectares were blackened.

Indonesia's forests are second only to Brazil's in size, and represent 10 percent of the world's remaining tropical rainforest. Nearly 75 percent of Indonesia's total land area is classified as forest land (about 144 million hectares), and some 100-110 million hectares are estimated to be closed-canopy forest, of which about 60 million hectares are designated as production forests. The fires were threatening, so something had to be done to stop the damage.

When the Indonesian government made its request for foreign assistance to fight the fires, a thick smoke haze and prolonged drought threatened the health of over a million people in Indonesia and neighboring countries. The haze was so thick that motorists switched on their headlights during the day. Heavy rain fell in some parts of Kalimantan, where fires raged in peat land and jungle, but it did not clear the air. Many residents in Banjarmasin, capital of South Kalimantan, wore masks as protection against smoke inhalation. The smog added to the woes of the region's economies; tourists stayed away and crop growth was hurt.

In response to Indonesia's request, the U.S. C-130 unit from the 153rd Airlift Wing, Wyoming Air National Guard led by Col. Harold Reed, and U.S. Forestry Service trained forest fire fighting experts, arrived the third week of October in Jakarta, to help fight the wildfires burning in East Java, Sumatra, and Kalimantan.

Since the growth and development of economic activity in Indonesia depends heavily on its natural resources such as land, forests, water and energy, the fires had to be controlled until the monsoon rains arrived. This became the task of the international effort, including the U.S. water bombers. By fighting the wildfires in Indonesia's forests, they provided a positive response to the archipelago people.

On the other hand, it conveyed another impression: in politics you can disagree with the government, but still want to help the people. The haze was a natural disaster that not only brought suffering to Indonesia, but also effected the whole region. The assistance provided to Indonesia was very important.

America is one of the leading nations in technology, and combined with its philanthropical philosophy, offers its technology for the benefit of the world. The international effort to fight the wildfires served to control the devastation until the monsoon rains arrived. The entire region benefited from the assistance.