SANTA MARIA VALLEY - Despite a somewhat controversial past, the air attack base at the Santa Maria Airport has played a key role in fighting back country wildfires.
Two fully loaded retardant tanks and an air attack plane stand ready on the tarmac at the Santa Maria Airport Air Attack Tanker Base.
"The base is back to being full service", says pilot Mark Nunez with the U.S. Forest Service, "that's important because now with the contract and the personnel we have here we can load aircraft, we have a three minute delivery period, so from the time we get an order and tanker comes in here its three minutes to load an aircraft and get it back out on an initial attack fire."
The Santa Maria Air Attack Base has already been called to duty for a fast moving wildfire in Ventura County
"We did call a couple of air tankers and helicopters from out of the area to drop retardant and water on it and help the firefighters on the ground", Nunez says.
After a string of massive wildfires in recent years in the Santa Barbara County back country, Mother Nature has done her part to make conditions ripe once again to burn.
"Those areas are starting to grow back, but when you look at the overall Los padres, that acreage still only represents about a third of the forest locally, so there's still quite a bit of vegetation out there", Nunez says, "we are way ahead of schedule for fuel dryness and its dropped off quite a bit in the last two weeks and I would expect by the first of July we will be at or very close to critical conditions."
The start of fire season is coming on a somber note with the death last Sunday of veteran firefighting pilot Todd Tompkins.
Tompkins and his co-pilot were killed when their air tanker crashed while making drops on a remote wildfire along the Utah-Nevada border.
Tompkins was well known at the Santa Maria Air Attack Base and in the tightly knit circle of firefighting pilots.
"Todd was a professional", Nunez says of good friend Tompkins, "he definitely strived to do a very good job and he'll be sorely missed."
Firefighters are encouraging everyone to pay close attention to various restrictions that are in place now or will be in place soon when venturing into the Central Coast back country.
They're also urging extreme caution and care with campfires and smoking.
