By Dan Catchpole
(Reuters) - As Los Angeles residents fled an insatiable inferno in Pacific Palisades last week, aerial firefighter Diego Calderoni was plunging towards the flames at about 170 mph (275 kph) in a DC-10 jet.
Relying on instinct and 13 years of experience, Calderoni pushed his 37-year-old jet -- a plane designed to haul passengers across oceans, not to skim treetops -- into a canyon and dropped a load of fire retardant, aiming between a cluster of firefighters on the ground and a wave of 60-foot-tall (18-meter-tall) flames sweeping towards them.
The 42-year-old pilot scored a direct hit, giving the ground crew the breathing space to save a nearby house.
Calderoni is among dozens of pilots from around the United States and Canada who have rushed to Los Angeles to drop fire retardant and water on fires encircling the city in a disaster that has claimed at least 25 lives and destroyed thousands of homes and entire neighborhoods.
Tankers and helicopters can slow down a fire or direct its path, but ground crews working with hand tools or hoses are the ones who actually contain it.
For aerial firefighters - or fire bombers, as they are commonly called - hitting the target is "the seat of the pants part" of the job, said Calderoni, a pilot with 10 Tanker, an aerial firefighting contractor based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
There is no precision equipment or autopilot for fire drops, just a pilot's view through the windscreen and his experience.
"I call it 'feeling the force,'" Calderoni told Reuters, a reference to a mystical energy in the sci-fi film, Star Wars.
Calderoni has flown over countless fires but was still shocked by the devastation he witnessed when he flew into Los Angeles on Jan. 8.
"It looks like a war zone," he said. "Everything's just wiped out."
FIRE BOMBERS
In the five or six daily runs he's performed in Los Angeles over the last week, Calderoni's DC-10 air tanker has been buffeted by updrafts and downdrafts, while also getting pushed by strong crosswinds whipping through canyons and passes.
Tanker pilots can call off a run if they don't think it is safe, he said. "If you get scared, you've put yourself in a scenario that you shouldn't be in."
Sean Ketchum, a helicopter captain with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire), is one of a handful of Cal Fire firefighters and pilots trained to work at night using night-vision goggles.
Ketchum, 46, was flying so low on Jan. 10, that he could feel the heat from the flames as his team of Sikorsky S-70i Firehawks were dropping water on the Palisades fire.
Ketchum has always been drawn to the thrill and urgency of firefighting. As a young kid, he and his friends would race after fire engines on their bicycles. A 23-year veteran with Cal Fire, he has spent the last 10 years flying in the left seat, coordinating with ground crews and other aircraft. He also spent a few years in the 2000s as a backseater, helping guide the pilot.
He said he relishes being one of a small group of firefighters working in the air. He paused and added, it is "super cool to fly on a helicopter every day."
Mike Evans, 57, began flying helicopters in the U.S. Army in the 1980s, before spending 18 years flying air rescue in Nevada, where he also started working to put out wildfires.
Evans does not consider fire bombing the most dangerous work he has done, because every move is a calculated risk. Nonetheless, pilots and aerial crew are making life and death decisions under intense pressure, he says.
"If we make an error, people tend to die."