LA wildfires: Aerial firefighters leader says flames should be ‘wake up’ call

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Executive Director of United Aerial Firefighters Association says Los Angeles fires are "totally demoralizing"

Paul Petersen, head of the United Aerial Firefighters Association, said that wildfires raging in Southern California are among the deadliest and costly fires in U.S. history.

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The head of the United Aerial Firefighters Association, which has deployed about 200 pilots to Southern California to fight massive ongoing wildfires, told Fox News Digital that the scope of the fires is “totally demoralizing” and shaping up to be some of the worst in the nation’s history. 

“What we are seeing, especially in the United States and worldwide, is there is no longer a fire season – it is fire year-round,” Paul Petersen said on Wednesday. “[This] could end up being one of the deadliest and most climate-costliest fires in U.S. history.”

Aerial firefighters with the association are limited to eight-hour shifts in the air, like airline pilots. However, Petersen said, they are on 24-hour shifts. At night, he said, pilots are outfitted with night vision goggles. From the air, they communicate the position of the flames to firefighters on the ground and spray water or retardant substances from above.

Among the aircraft supplied by the association are helicopters, like Blackhawks and ACH 47 Chinooks, and air tankers, like Grumman S-2T and Lockheed C-130H planes, carrying thousands of gallons of water. They also supply “scooper” planes, which “scoop water from oceans, lakes and reservoirs which can be dropped as regular water or be mixed with a foam retardant,” according to Cal Fire. 

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A plane makes a drop as smoke billows from the Palisades Fire at the Mandeville Canyon, in Los Angeles, California, U.S., January 11, 2025.   (REUTERS/Carlos Barria)

These planes add to a huge fleet attempting to quell fires in Southern California. Cal Fire currently has over 60 planes and helicopters within its firefighting fleet; Cal Fire also counts three King Air A200 twin-turboprop planes among its “air tactical aircraft.” The Air National Guard has flown C-130 Hercules planes “equipped with Modular Aerial Fire Fighting Systems” to the Los Angeles area, where they are operating missions. 

“I’ve seen just the pictures, and I’ve talked to fire chiefs that are down there – they [are] ensuring that the devastation is worse than what you see on TV, that it’s worse than what you can imagine,” he continued. “And from a firefighter’s perspective, it is just totally demoralizing because firefighters are there to solve problems and their people call them when it’s their worst day. And you go in to try to solve that problem, and you can’t do it.”

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As of Wednesday, more than 40,000 acres and more than 12,300 homes have burned across the state between the Palisades, Eaton, Hurst and Auto Wildfires, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The Palisades Fire, which has consumed more than 23,000 acres in the Los Angeles area, is only 19% contained, according to the agency. 

“When you have 13,000 homes lost, you know that that angers a lot of firefighters because they didn’t have the resources in order to do that,” Petersen said. 

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A mural by Sergei Statsenko, who also goes by the artist name Steeke, thanks firefighters in the Venice Beach area of Los Angeles as wildfires burn Monday, Jan. 13, 2025.  (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

“There’s a couple of different components of [this],” Petersen said of why these latest fires are so devastating. “When you have extreme weather, and you have the Santa Ana winds that are blowing, you know, 50, 60, 70, 80 miles an hour, and then you introduce fire into that… it just moves so rapidly that people are unprepared for it.

“Communities that are unprepared for it, firefighters are surprised by it… When you start losing home after home and blocks after blocks after blocks, you’re just trying to figure out how do we stop this? And, you know, there’s really no playbook of how to stop a fire.”

Fox News Digital previously reported that the city’s fire hydrants ran out of water as firefighters worked to stop the flames, and that the department’s budget was slashed just weeks before the Palisades Fire broke out. 

“Without increased funding for wildland fire, we’re going to continue to see this over and over again,” Petersen said. “[It’s] not only recognizing that it is a year-round fire season, but also having the funding and the money to invest not only for fire suppression, but for hazardous fuels, for hardening communities. U.S. needs to get it, you know, take this seriously, that you have to do all things in order to protect communities from wildfire.”

A California Department of Corrections hand crew works containment lines ahead of the Palisades Fire Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2025 in Santa Monica, Calif.  (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)

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“There is a huge need to look at local, state and federal levels to how do we really start to combat when fire and suppression is a big part of it,” he continued. “You got to fight. You have to fight the fire you have. But there also has to be fuel treatments, logging, grazing, green stripping. There also has to be incentives from insurance companies for fire-adapted communities. All three of those have to work and in one fell swoop in order to do that.”

“It takes a tragedy for people to really wake up to this,” Petersen said. “And firefighters have been talking about this for 25 years, these problems that have been going on.”

Two men were charged with felony arson in Los Angeles this week as authorities combat firebugs and looters amid the chaos. Petersen said it was extremely unlikely that the fires were started naturally via lightning or spontaneous combustion.

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A helicopter makes a drop as smoke billows from the Palisades Fire in the Encino neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, U.S. January 11, 2025.  (REUTERS/Daniel Dreifuss     )

“I can tell you probably with 99% surety that it wasn’t lightning and there really wasn’t any natural start to that… [With] lightning, typically you’ll get weather or you get high clouds coming in with cumulonimbus. Cumulonimbus doesn’t form with high winds [like the] Santa Ana winds… Lightning is about the number one cause,” he said. 

“So whether it is arson or whether it is carelessness from citizens or whether it is utility companies [it is likely a] human-caused fire… The wind is a natural event, the fire is natural, but the cause of that fire is not natural,” he said.

Christina Coulter is a U.S. and World reporter for Fox News Digital. Email story tips to christina.coulter@fox.com.

Related Topics

• LA Fires
• California
• Wildfire
• Los Angeles