DAVID GREENE, HOST:
And let's hear now about a challenge that firefighters are facing in Colorado and in every Western state. The U.S. Forest Service is battling fires this summer with fewer air tankers. Those are the planes that drop retardant over the flames. The number of tankers available has shrunk significantly over the last decade or so.
Boise State Public Radio, Scott Graf has more on what led to the shortage and what's being done about it.
SCOTT GRAF, BYLINE: It's a sunny, warm morning at the Boise Airport. Shiny, white and green planes slowly pull onto the retardant-stained tarmac. Pilot Lyle Ehalt is returning from a drop over a nearby grass fire.
LYLE EHALT: And basically, what we did was lay a line to prevent the fire from spreading further to the west.
GRAF: Back on the ground, standing next to his tanker, Ehalt shares a little bit about its history.
EHALT: Actually, this particular aircraft was used as Air Force One, believe it or not.
GRAF: Ehalt says the plane used to carry Gerald Ford. It eventually ended up in Saskatchewan and was turned into an air tanker. The plane is back in the States this summer, on loan to the U.S. That's because there's a shortage of air tankers here. In 2000, the Forest Service had contracts with private companies for 43 such planes. Today, that number is nine.
JENNIFER JONES: This is something that we are working very hard to rectify.
GRAF: Jennifer Jones is with the Forest Service. She says structural failures led several models to be retired. Last summer, the Forest Service fired one of its vendors. A fatal crash a month ago in Utah claimed the lives of two pilots. Besides the loss of life, the accident meant one less plane in an already-shrinking fleet. Jones says the Forest Service has appealed to Congress for funding for more tankers.
JONES: We're deeply committed to modernizing and improving our large air tanker fleet and we've been taking a number of steps toward that goal.
GRAF: Two weeks ago, the Forest Service awarded contracts that will add a total of seven newer tankers this year and next. Dan Snider is the president of Neptune Aviation in Missoula, Montana. His company was given one of those contracts to build bigger, faster planes. He says the modern tankers...
DAN SNIDER: Now can get to the fire in half the time, carrying an extra thousand gallons. And if you can catch a fire in the initial attack phase, it saves that fire from growing into the mega-fires where it become a project to just - you're constantly trying to deal with it for weeks on end.
JIM HALL: I'm extremely disappointed.
GRAF: Former National Transportation Safety Board head Jim Hall sees the new contracts as nothing more than a Band-Aid.
HALL: This is a national security issue. It's a public safety issue. It's one that demands national attention and national direction.
GRAF: Hall led a panel that audited the nation's firefighting fleet. The group found a system that needed major upgrades. That was 10 years ago, and Hall says very little has changed since then. He hopes he's wrong but thinks it could take a Katrina-like disaster to get the country's attention.
But Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who oversees the Forest Service, says the tanker issue is on Washington's radar. But...
SECRETARY TOM VILSACK: But there also has to be a degree of patience because it's not easy to make up for, literally, decades of a different strategy.
GRAF: A strategy of more passive forest management that's led to the buildup of fuels, and a strategy that's led to an old, shrinking tanker fleet. But Vilsack is confident that firefighters will have all the aerial support they'll need this summer. Extra helicopters have been made available. And just last week, the Forest Service began activating National Guard aircraft.
For NPR News, I'm Scott Graf in Boise.
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