BOZEMAN — Firefighters nationwide are coming together to help extinguish the wind-whipped flames that have spread through Los Angeles. Although the LA fires are a thousand miles from Montana, different agencies and companies around the state have gone to southern California to support from the ground or sky.
Belgrade-based aerial firefighting company Bridger Aerospace has about 10 people fighting the wildfires a thousand miles away.
“In January, in Bozeman, it's hard to be in that mindset when you don't see smoke in the air and you're not in active firefighting mode. When you see that on TV, in the DNA of everybody at Bridger, it’s how can we respond and how quickly can we respond,” Bridger Aerospace CEO Sam Davis says.
Davis says the fires are devastating.
“You would have to be emotionally dead not to respond to folks losing their homes or losing their lives. Churches, schools, going up in flames. Fire takes no quarter,” Davis says.
Bridger Aerospace sent two super scoopers to California. And these aerial firefighter aircraft uphold the title “Super.”
“ [They] are over-engineered for picking up water loads and pretty heavy water loads and doing it continuously on a full tank of fuel so it can drop water for four to five hours and continuously scoop and drop. One plane can drop a few hundred thousand gallons a day,” Davis says.
It's not just aerial firefighting, though. Across Montana, 11 departments and agencies have reportedly sent support to LA.
“You see a lot of folks banding together to want to support what's going on because you put yourself in the shoes of the folks suffering the loss,” Davis says.
Currently, the fires remain under investigation. In the meantime, men and women continue to battle the blaze.
