Local firefighter coordinates big fires from air

The 2024 fire season will go down as particularly long, hot and stifling, and if you are enjoying the decreased level of smoke in the air, you can thank, in part, Weiser resident Curt Stanley.

 A U.S. Forest Service Air Tac Coordinator, he has worked on some of the major fires that burned tens of thousands of acres in Idaho and the West.

 Stanley, 62, was instrumental in helping fight the Lava fire. Located east of Weiser, it has charred well over 97,000 acres and was reported as 90 percent contained as of Oct. 14.

 “I’m a retiree, so they hire me back when the need arises,” he told the Signal American a few weeks ago, following a season that also took him to Montana and other locations. 

 Numerous fires are still burning east of Washington County, and although the weather is beginning to turn, some of them are fairly significant, like the Goat fire southeast of Cascade, which has burned more than 35,000 acres and is only 34 percent contained as of Monday.

 Nonetheless, Stanley says the U.S.F.S. is in a much better position in terms of resources and boots on the ground, which means he can turn his attention to other priorities.

 As a retiree since 2020, he has the option of ending the season when he feels it’s appropriate.

 “Usually about this time of year is when I call it quits to get ready for elk season,” he said. 

 Stanley is a long-time hunter, growing up near Redding, Calif. in an environment not so different from Weiser.

 “I grew up in northeast California, Shasta County, kind of up in a little farming community a lot similar to Weiser,” he said, adding that he began working for the federal government in the early 1990s. “The National Park Service, that’s where I got my start. I started on roads and trails maintenance and got red-carded as a firefighter because they always like to keep reserves. Once I went through the basic fire school, I kind of caught the bug, as a lot of people say.”

 A red card is simply a qualification card, listing what you are qualified to do as a firefighter for the federal government. Stanley loved the work and asked his Fire Management Officer to do his best to get him put on fire assignments.  

 A year and a half later, he was assigned to a hotshot crew based about a half hour north in Tule Lake, Calif., located about four miles south of the Oregon border.

 “On the Oregon side, in Klamath Falls, there was a hotshot crew based there, so one winter I went up there and met with the superintendent, with the crew and submitted an application; I did four years on that crew,” he explained. “Hotshot crews are transported in on transport buggies. Each one carries 8-10 people each and you drive to a drop point, they call it, and from there you walk into wherever your assignment is on the fire.”

 Stanley said that large fire suppression operations are a lot like military operations.

 “Hotshots are essentially like the infantry, like the infantry in the Marines,” he said. “We have smokejumpers, too. Those are the guys who jump out of airplanes and parachute into fires.”

 Stanley was still a temporary employee while working on his hotshot crew, but that changed. He worked his way up through the ranks and was eventually hired as a permanent U.S.F.S. employee and began working on fire engines. He was an engine captain for eight years.  

 From there he went into middle management where he became interested in the aviation side of firefighting.

 “I had a boss who was a big proponent of looking into different aspects of fire … in the event you get injured. Let’s say I busted a knee or a hip or whatever, and it prevented me from being able to pass the arduous pack test, which, if you can’t do that, obviously you can’t be out on the fire line,” Stanley explained. “So, I started looking at different avenues of staying in fire. Dispatch was one, logistics was another and I took some classes in both, but they just didn’t spark my interest at all, so I asked about the Air Tactics Academy because he (his boss) had been an instructor. He gave me the same response I got from a lot of people. He was, like, ‘Well, you don’t have any aviation experience, you’ll be behind the curve compared to other people.’ I told him that I could learn, that I knew I could do it, so he supported me.”

 Stanley went into the job as a trainee going through a long, in-depth, multi-year process that included a final evaluation or “check ride” to qualify for his position. In all, it took him almost three years. He started in 2008 and was qualified in 2011.

 During a large fire, Stanley now sits next to a pilot, coordinating both ground and air resources.

 “Essentially, my job is air traffic control on fires, so I’m on radios,” he explained. “I’m talking to the tanker pilots; I’m talking to the helicopter pilots and talking to the folks on the ground. The folks on the ground, that’s who we are there for. Those are the guys that are throwing dirt with their shovels or Pulaski’s and squirting water from an engine or whatever.

 “There is a misconception that aircraft put out fires … we don’t. We assist and give it our best shot to retard the fire and slow it, but at the end of the day, it’s those boys and girls on the ground that are throwing dirt and all that stuff. They are the ones putting it out.”

 Stanley, who is currently pursuing his private pilot’s license, commonly flies in an Aero Commander, a twin-turbo aircraft, coordinating firefighting resources on ground and in the air. Interestingly, the aircraft and their pilots are vendors contracted by the Forest Service.

 He said some of the bigger fires he has worked on have been hundreds of thousands of acres in size, typically resulting in 10- to 12-hour days. Pilots are limited to eight hours of actual flight time, but can be on the clock for 14 hours a day.

 “A 100,000-acre fire isn’t considered a mega fire anymore,” Stanley noted. “It used to be that way, but not anymore. I’ve flown on a couple that were, you know, 200,000, 300,000 acres.”

 Stanley’s job is crucial, carrying with it a great deal of responsibility for the lives of many.

 “It’s constantly on my mind the whole time I’m flying,” he said. “First, I have to remember who I’m working for, the guys and gals on the ground, and my number one priority is maintaining aircraft safety. Obviously, if we have multiple aircraft on an incident, we don’t want to have a mid-air collision or some sort of accident, so I have to maintain aircraft separation. That’s my job.

 “I’ve got to be able to do that and get the retardant and the water where it needs to go, to the folks on the ground that are asking for it. So, yeah, the responsibility is high because if I’m having a bad day and make a wrong decision and I clear an aircraft into my air space and give them the wrong altitude or some wrong information, the potential for a bad outcome increases quite a bit. That’s why the training to get qualified is pretty extensive.”

 Stanley and wife Christina decided they wanted to move to Idaho about four years before he retired. 

 They finally found the house they wanted in Weiser, so Christina who works in Medicare insurance, moved to Weiser in 2018 while Stanley finished up his career with the Forest Service. About a year and a half later, he joined Christina in Weiser.

 Stanley said he’s not sure when he plans on retiring for good.

 “My wife and I talk about this every year and I evaluate over the winter, ‘Ok, do I want to keep doing this? Am I still having fun?’ so it’s a year-to-year thing for me,” he said. “As soon as it quits being fun, I guess that’s when I’ll stop, because I don’t have to do it. The guys that handle my assignments now are out of McCall or Boise. They’re local here, so I try not to let them down, but they understand that I’m retired and I’ve got a life to live.”