Helicopter firefighting operations center opens near Idyllwild

By GAIL WESSON
The Press-Enterprise

What a helicopter firefighting crew dubbed “The Shack” is gone and in its place is a new chalet-front operations center dedicated Saturday off Highway 243 near Idyllwild in the San Jacinto Mountains.

The Keenwild Helitack base is a national wildland firefighting resource with a seven-member crew and a Bell 407 awaiting dispatch as an initial attack resource on a new fire or an assignment to ferry firefighters and resources to a fire.

The crew responds to 35 to 50 initial attacks and four to eight large fires a year, according to Doug Ross, helitack superintendent. Other public safety agencies and medical helicopters may use the landing pad.

Rep. Mary Bono Mack, R-Palm Springs, speaks at the dedication of the new Keenwild Helitack base recently. The base is a national wildland firefighting resource with a seven-member crew and a Bell 407.

Rep. Mary Bono Mack, R-Palm Springs; San Bernardino National Forest Supervisor Jeanne Wade Evans and Idyllwild District Ranger Laurie Rosenthal were among event speakers but they referred to the “gray beards” in the crowd as those who knew the history of the base, which opened in 1963.

Bono Mack credited Norm Walker as the “squeaky wheel” who shared information about the facilities need and answered questions that came up. Walker was the forest’s Idyllwild district fire chief before he retired, and is now interim chief of a community fire district in Idyllwild.

Helicopters were first used in firefighting in the Angeles National Forest in 1948, according to Jim Hess, 64, of Running Springs, whose 33-year fire career started at Keenwild in 1964.

The slow-moving Bell B-1 was supposed to be for reconnaissance, but the crew wearing jump helmets would stand on the copter skids and “we would just bail out,” he said.

Hess remembers lots of lightning strike fires where the “challenge was to get in and put it out before it got over the hill.”

Doug Henninger, 59, of Idyllwild, remembered the 1970 Romero fire in Santa Barbara where “the base heliport was on a polo field” and up to eight crew members stayed in a beach cottage between shifts.

“The locals brought up bundles of avocados,” Hess said. Crews sometimes spent weeks away from home, went days without a shower and ate C-rations.

‘a brotherhood’

The close-knit group was “like a brotherhood,” said Jose Constantino, 59, of Valle Vista, a helitack crew member in the 1970s and 1980s, whose son, Jael, joined the crew six years ago.

In the beginning, there was a makeshift helicopter landing pad down a single-lane access road near the Keenwild fire station. As Rosenthal told the story, in the 1970s the crew used the dismantled remains of the old Ranger Peak fire lookout to build the 560-square-foot office that was moved uphill in 1974.

Lack of funds forced based closure, but six years later it reopened in 2001 with the showing that the base was a firefighting asset and a spot on a competitive capital projects list.

An initial $600,000 was set aside in 2007, and then Congresswoman Bono Mack assured that the remainder needed was part of an appropriations bill. Bono Mack said her job is “to make sure you have the resources to do your job best.”

The $1,024,000 project by CGO Construction Co. of Rancho Cucamonga began in June 2009. The work included reconstruction of the helipad and access road and the building, which includes an operations center, offices, a kitchen, restrooms and a locker room.

The crew moved back in last month from temporary quarters by the Cranston Ranger Station on Highway 74 east of Hemet.

Reach Gail Wesson at 951-763-3455 or gwesson@PE.com