“I’m doing battle on the ground being told, ‘Why aren’t you flying?’” “You get pressure from the public and politicians to put aircraft on the fire,” Mr. Under heavy smoke conditions, helicopters, too, are grounded. When the smoke thickens, planes are grounded, forcing aviation chiefs to use large helicopters that can fly under the smoke - though they hold smaller quantities of water or retardant. The candy-colored liquid retardant lingers long after water has evaporated and is more effective at lowering a fire’s intensity so that crews can engage on the ground. Forest Service restricts use around waterways to avoid fish kills and algae blooms.ĭespite the trade-offs, air attacks are the most visible show of force and can cover lots of ground quickly. Some critics argue that retardant, a mixture of water and phosphate salts often used as a fertilizer, does more damage than good. “Every day, costs come in, and I’m on the top of the heap.”

“They call me the most expensive man on the fire,” said Matt Stanford, the air operation branch director at Cal Fire base camp. The aircraft themselves cost more than $1 million a day in the initial weeks of the fire. But as government budgets become strained and extreme drought and the effects of climate change alter the landscape, battling megafires - massive blazes that spread quickly and burn at high intensity - is increasingly costly, raising questions about the long-term sustainability of the firefight.Īir attack - deploying planes and helicopters to drop water and retardant - is often the costliest part of any large wildfire operation.Īircraft have dropped about 21 million gallons of flame retardant mixture on the Dixie fire, at a cost of $4.62 per gallon. The Dixie fire shows that as wildfires have grown in size, so has the magnitude of the effort to combat them. Officials spent more than $610 million over three months to bring the fire under control - by far the most expensive suppression campaign in California history, according to the head of Cal Fire. Over several weeks, the operation grew to a scale rarely seen before: Thousands of personnel were deployed, as well as hundreds of bulldozers, aircraft and other equipment, along with millions of gallons of water and flame retardant. In late August, New York Times journalists shadowed emergency crews in a remote forested area of Northern California as they battled the Dixie fire, which at nearly a million acres is the second largest fire in state history. The fires have forced state and federal officials to marshal armies of people and resources at all cost. Nine of California’s 20 largest fires have occurred since 2020, according to Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency.

Giant blazes are tearing across the state with greater speed and frequency, destroying towns and sending smoke hurtling hundreds of miles away. In the past two years, California has found itself under siege from more large-scale fires burning with greater intensity than at any time on record. Another burned down 900 buildings and was the first ever to reach a million acres. Another swelled to a quarter million acres as it came within a few miles of Lake Tahoe. One grew to a size larger than Rhode Island and leveled a Gold Rush-era town.

Dixie fire today