The world’s largest firefighting aircraft arrived in Monterey County this week to help battle the blaze that has burned 80,186 acres and destroyed 23 homes and 25 outbuildings near Big Sur since it was ignited on June 21. But the legendary “flying boat,” from British Columbia, Canada, was thwarted Tuesday by heavy smoke. Firefighters from the U.S. Forest Service and Cal Fire are now being reinforced by the Martin Mars, a 162,000-pound “flying boat” capable of dropping a 7,200-gallon wall of water that saturates about 3½ acres per dump.
The 48-foot high aircraft will refill its water tanks at Lake San Antonio in southern Monterey County, scooping the water on the fly without landing. The payload is then injected with 30 gallons of ThermoGel, a fire suppressant, before being dropped. The plane is accompanied by three tractor-trailers carrying fuel, supplies and spare parts.
Unfortunately, weather conditions on Tuesday proved uncooperative, truncating the planned operations.
“There were some fairly violent winds coming in, and the blowing smoke created very low visibility for the tankers that were coming in,” said Wayne Coulson of Coulson Flying Tankers, the company that owns the plane. “We were able to scoop 5,000 gallons of water out of Lake San Antonio, inject it with Thermo-gel, and make one drop. But the incident commander shut down the operation around 4 p.m. because we only had about two miles of visibility — we were basically smoked out.
west coast 911 firefighter news source – Monterey County Herald
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