DOES THE SAN DIEGO REGION HAVE ADEQUATE AERIAL FIREFIGHTING CAPABILITY FOR THE COMING FIRE SEASON?

By Miriam Raftery

August 24, 2025 (San Diego’s East County) -- As we approach peak fire season, Cal Fire/County Fire has a press conference set for Tuesday to discuss the many preparations the agencies have made. But questions have been raised over air power readiness, due to temporary closure of the Ramona airport due to expansion and SDG&E losing its Erickson Aircrane that has helped fight fires in recent years.

ECM has researched these issues and obtained the following information:

SDG&E’s firefighting capacity

Photo, right:  Erickson Aircrane over El Monte Valley in Lakeside.

The massive Erikson Aircrane helicopter that SDG&E has utilized in recent years has a 2,650 gallon water tank and is capable of dropping over 25,000 gallons of water per hour on brush fires.  But due to acquisition of the Erikson helicopter by Helicopter Express, SDG&E no longer has a contract for this key firefighting aircraft.

Alex Welling, SDG&E’s strategic communications manager of wildfire resiliency and operations, confirmed in an email to ECM, “While renewing the Erikson Aircrane was not an option for SDG&E in 2025, we collaborated with our fire agencies to further strengthen our aerial firefighting resources with the addition of twin Blackhawk aircrafts. When working together, these two Blackhawks are more efficient than the Aircrane.”

The Black Hawk has a 1,000 gallon tank, so two Blackhawks combined have slightly less tank capacity than one Erickson Aircrane.

Ramona air field closure

Cal Fire’s Ramona Air Attack base is closed for an 8-to-12-month construction to increase capacity. While the base is closed, air tankers which can spread retardant ahead of fire lines must fly in from the Hemet Ryan Air Attack Base in Riverside County, 47 miles from the Ramona base.

If San Diego County experiences a significant wildfire, Cal Fire has said it plans to deploy four air tankers instead of the customary two, to help make up for the time delay, ECM news partner 10 News reports.

Cal Fire indicates it could also activate a temporary reload base with a portable retardant unit at Brown Field in Otay Mesa.

But Patrick Ward, a former seasonal firefighter who has worked out of the Ramona air tanker base and as a contractor doing fire retardant at Ramona, is concerned about delays in fighting brush fires in East County.

“This means we won’t have any air tankers reloading out of Ramona,” he told East County Magazine, adding that he is concerned about delays in air tankers coming from Hemet or in delays activating Brown Field, which is also prone to foggy conditions.

“In 2002 when the Ramona runway was extended, the air tankers operated out of Gillespie Field (in El Cajon),” he said, adding that Gillespie has a longer runway and higher weight load than the Ramona air base. It’s also centrally located in San Diego County and closer to East County, where the county’s worst wildfires have started in the past.  “So why aren’t they doing that again?” he says of utilizing Gillespie Field as a temporary air tanker base.

He also raised concerns over the prospect of other major fires in the state, and what would happen if Hemet’s large capacity air tankers are already deployed elsewhere, particularly if a fire starts shortly before dark, when the air tankers cannot fly.

A very large air tanker can carry up to 4,000 gallons of fire retardant.

Darkness in winter can occur as early as 4 p.m., yet as last January’s Los Angeles wildfires show, fire season is now year-round.

ECM reached out to Cal Fire public information officer Michael Cornette.  He responded, “At this time we do not have an agreement in pace to utilize Gillespie Field as a temporary mix site, nor have we reached an agreement with the contractor (Perimeter Solutions) for its operation.  Additionally, aside from emergency funding, there is currently no established mechanism to support mix site operations ta Gillespie Field.”

However, he added ,”We do have the capability to utilize Brown Field as a temporary mix site once funding becomes available. This funding will be activated during periods of ongoing vegetation fires or at the direction of CAL FIRE leadership. The use of Brown Field is best suited for CAL FIRE, as it offers ample space and size, established contracts, and the ability to support mix site operations. Brown Field will serve as the designated temporary mix site (when authorized) while construction is underway at the Ramona facility.”

Is price gouging by fire retardant company a factor?

Ward told ECM that a whistleblower called him anonymously to state that the reason Cal Fire is not using Gillespie Field for air tankers during the Ramona closure is because of “price gouging” by the nation’s only authorized manufacturer of fire retardant, Perimeter Solutions. 

“They wanted to charge $300,000 per month to load retardant at Gillespie,” Ward says the caller stated. “They are charging the U.S. Forest Service $5,000 a day.”

A Cal Fire official also emailed ECM an August 6 article published in the New York Times, titled How One Company Maintained a Monopoly on U.S. Fire Retardant. The article details how Perimeter and its lobbyists succeeded in squelching competition to maintain a monopoly as the nation’s only provider of fire retardant approved for use by state and federal agencies.

“Perimeter has used its dominance to boost profits at the expense of federal and state government agencies—its biggest customers,” the New York Times article states.

Retardant utilized to fight the L.A. fires in January cost 20 to 30 percent more than four years ago, outpacing inflation.  Since 2021, when investors bought the company and took it public, Perimeter’s profits have roughly doubled, according to the NYT investigation. 

The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, parent agency of the U.S. Forest Service, has called it a “massive risk” to rely on a single manufacturer, where beyond high prices supply interruption in the event of a factory fire is a critical concern. 

A rival company lost its contract with the Forest Service in 2005 due to concerns over toxicity to fish. Another company that briefly had a rival product accepted had its federal approval cancelled over concerns that a goopy substance formed in tanks of air tankers that had used both Perimeter’s product and the rival’s product. The rival manufacturer, Fortress Fire Retardant Systems, has since abandoned its efforts, restoring Perimeter’s monopoly.