City on Fire

All images, except where noted: Dan Child/LAFD Photo

City on Fire

The wildfires that decimated Los Angeles in January pushed aerial firefighting teams to their limits. These are some of their stories.

By Mark Huber

On Jan. 7, 2025, Dan Child had a decision to make.

The chief pilot for Los Angeles (California) City Fire Department (LAFD) Air Operations was flying one of the unit’s five Leonardo AW139 medium twin helicopters equipped with a 500-gal. fire-suppression tank. Driven by Santa Ana winds that would eventually gust to 100 mph that night, wildfires began breaking out across the city that morning, most notably the devastating fire in Pacific Palisades and, eight hours later, the Eaton Fire.

Child (pictured at right) had lifted off at 10:30 am en route to a small fire in the Hollywood Hills. Five minutes later, he got a report about the beginning of the conflagration in the Palisades.

Winds were already gusting from 30 kt. to 40 kt. (and slightly higher in the mountains), but the AW139s were still able to make their water drops. But per the forecast, as the afternoon dragged on, conditions became “progressively worse,” Child says. The turbulence was intense, and it became harder to control the helicopter.

The severe chop was setting off high– and low–rotor rpm alarms. The AW139, which pilots generally praise for its sports car–like performance, was flying more like a bus. “All kinds of red flags were just standing up for me,” Child recalls.

Winds in the area continued to build, with reports coming in of gusts from 66 kt. to 89 kt. “The helicopter was just all over the place. I’ve never been in anything this bad, and I’ve been flying for 24 years,” Child says. At 7:30 the night of Jan. 7, he got on the radio and stood down air operations for the night. “I think everyone was relieved,” he admits.

Given the winds, it was increasingly difficult just to control the helicopter, forget about getting water on target. The wind shear was unpredictable. The danger was obvious. But standing down was not an easy call. The AW139s had been able to make about 8 to 10 drops an hour each since they launched that morning. Homes had been saved as a result.

Firefighters are trained to run to the danger. And all LAFD pilots must begin their careers as firefighters. “People call 911 and we come out and fix the problem,” Child says. That January day, he had to decide if he was “a firefighter who is a pilot or a pilot who is a firefighter. The best thing I could do is be a pilot.” And his pilot training told him to land. “I knew it was the right thing, and I felt a lot better after the fact.”

The next morning, the LAFD’s AW139s were back in the air. With their pilots donning night-vision goggles (NVG), the aircraft were particularly effective in the evenings. The crews would fly for the next six consecutive nights and days.

All Hands on Deck

Mike Sagely was the first helicopter pilot on scene minutes after the Eaton Fire broke out at 6:18 pm on Jan. 7. The senior pilot for Los Angeles County Fire Department (LACoFD) Air Operations was flying a Bell 412. He describes what happened next.

“We hit wind shear and turbulence that was so severe that, for a short period of time, I really didn’t have control of the aircraft. We went negative G. My transmission-pressure caution light came on. For a split second, I cavitated the main transmission or hit enough rough air to trip the pressure sensor.”

His airspeed indicator read 85 kt. The GPS said he was doing 11 kt. across the ground. “My eyes didn’t believe it,” Sagely recalls.

Sagely, recipient of the 2024 VAI Salute to Excellence Pilot of the Year Award, was flying the helicopter coordinator or “helco” aircraft. The helco typically directs water drops by other rotorcraft and coordinates these efforts with firefighters on the ground. The department’s Sikorsky Firehawks arrived on scene a few minutes later, but due to the high winds, they quickly opted to return to their base, Barton Heliport (KPAI), adjacent to Whiteman Airport (KWHP) in Pacoima.

“We made the decision almost immediately, based on conditions,” says Sagely. But he and the battalion chief riding shotgun in the 412 stayed behind on the fire for a while to help identify its likely path and assist in coordinating evacuations. The wind—in the air and on the ground—made firefighting virtually impossible. “It was purely about saving lives and getting people out of there. So many houses were on fire.”

Sagely stayed on scene until his fuel began to run low. Because of that and the ongoing danger involved, “it wasn’t worth flying anymore. You can’t second-guess yourself in that situation.”

The next morning, LACoFD helicopters were back in the air. The department operates a mixed fleet that includes three 412s and three Sikorsky S-70i Firehawks. Pilots are cross-trained to fly both aircraft. The 412s are fitted with 360-gal. water tanks; the Firehawks are faster and have tanks that can hold 1,000 gal.

Over the course of four days, Sagely and his fellow department pilots would fly around 40 hours each. For the week, they made 1,100 water drops. One Firehawk made 131 snorkels over a 13.3-hour period. Sagely made 98 over the course of nine hours when he started flying drop missions on Jan. 9.

On Jan. 10, he started flying night drops. Even with NVG, nighttime firefighting is more difficult. “There’s an uptick in concentration,” Sagely explains. “You’re scanning for hazards and tracking [electric transmission] wires. When you’re in the middle of the action, it’s easy to lose track of the hazards around you. We call it ‘distraction hijack.’ ” Sagely flew both the Eaton and Palisades Fires.

Back at Barton, it was all hands on deck, with helicopters flying between 16 and 20 hours a day thanks to rotating crews and a maintenance staff that stayed around the clock, performing a variety of regular inspections, both minor and major, as well as significant maintenance in the midst of the tumult, sometimes on the ramp in the middle of the night. Sagely says the department’s maintenance staff during the fires “was just crushing it. Without them, there is no way we could have kept up the pace.”

Working the Wrenches

Ruben “Mike” Perez and Terry Apodaca (pictured below, right) were 2 of 13 LACoFD helicopter mechanics on duty during the fires. With red-flag fire danger warnings up, several mechanics came in early Jan. 6 to make sure the helicopters were ready to go in time for the forecasted high winds the following day.

When the fires hit on the 7th, Perez “knew it was a pretty good fire” just based on what he could see from the Barton ramp. When the super-high winds moved in that night and the helicopters returned to base, dread set in. “This is going to be bad,” Perez thought “It was kind of a helpless feeling.” When he found out just how bad the following morning, he was “blown away.” It was the beginning of some late nights.

Given the tempo of fire operations, the Firehawks were burning through scheduled inspections, including 40-hour inspections that can sometimes take days. The team would swarm the affected helicopter and knock it out within a couple of hours. And they added extra steps to mitigate the impact of flying all day—and sometimes all night—in smoke, such as engine washing.

“We wanted to keep the engines clean so they could perform at a high level,” Apodaca says. And inspections after post-maintenance check flights were performed with extra rigor to detect any engine or gearbox leaks.

Aside from the inspections, other things popped up. A safety cable broke on a snorkel. A radio had to be swapped out when it became inoperative after soot and dirt got into the keys. The cause of caution lights, probably just turbulence, still needed investigation.

“We did very well on the maintenance side of the house. We created a plan, and we worked that plan,” says Perez. “I think we were a little lucky, too,” he adds, noting that nothing major happened to any of the ships, such as “an owl coming through the windshield. We didn’t have anything unforeseen happen, and the aircraft held up well. I couldn’t believe we were flying that much. It was rewarding and refreshing.”

Mark Huber is an aviation journalist with more than two decades of experience in the vertical flight industry.