This Is No Urban Myth

Have you ever heard of the firefighting story in which a ‘scooper plane’ accidentally scoops up a scuba diver while taking on a load of water, then unknowingly dumps him on top of a fire? His body, in a wetsuit and with a dive tank still attached, is supposedly later found in the charred forest. Snopes says this is an urban myth. We believe Snopes.

Scooper planes for fighting forest fires are not myths. On July 19, San Francisco’s Andrew Vik took this photo of a scooper plane flying uncomfortably close to his Islander 36 Geja while in the process of fighting a fire. "I’d been sound asleep until 7:15 a.m., when three fire-fighting planes came through in constant rotation. There was a wildfire nearby, and the pilots had selected Brna Bay, Croatia, where my Geja was anchored, as the place to pick up their water. Sometimes they touched down less than 100 meters away.

"The planes managed to be a big assist in putting the fires out, much to the relief of the locals, who were freaked out about the flames on the ridge all night long."

Scooper planes are used to fight some fires in Los Angeles and San Diego Counties. The National Forest Service paid the Rand Corporation $800,000 to decide whether scooper planes are worthwhile. When the Rand Corporation concluded that they were a valuable part of the fire-fighting mix, the National Forest Service, for some reason, had a fit. Since you’re all interested in aerial fire fighting, we can tell you the argument for planes that drop fire-retardants is that retardants are much more effective than water. On the downside, planes using retardants have to land at an airport, load, and take off again. Scoopers, on the other hand, can do load after load after load without having to land. Unlike planes with retardants, which attempt to drop their loads on places that haven’t caught fire yet, scooper planes drop water directly on the flames.

In any event, we’re glad Andrew and Geja survived, as we’re looking forward to receiving yet another annual installment about their adventures in the Adriatic.