Helicopter Pilot, will travel

Tampa airport. The white zone, is for happy reunions and brave goodbyes. A last kiss, a look back and then its off to Greece and three weeks of firefighting in the Air Crane. Airline travel is a grind. This day is only about 7 hours old and the flight and connect time will mean that I get into Athens in about 20 more hours.I wish I could sleep sitting up crammed into my economy plus seat but short nods followed by the painful realization that my neck pain is now only exceeded by a cart meets head collision that seemed all too intentional to be accidental. The insincere apology and announcement follows. Cart coming through the aisle, watch your head and elbows… get whacked.

Athens on short final and the garbage dump is burning again. Down the jet way I am passed by mostly Greeks who beeline to the Camel smoking booth that is exhausted out the top and spews smoky air into the hall just before baggage claim.  Lovely.

Bags are claimed and my taxi driver Demosthenes,named for the famous Greek orator lectures me on the fate of modern day politically corrupt and morally and financially bankrupt Hellas. He sums it all up as we arrive at the hotel with, so basically Greece is fucked.

I have heard this said in several countries and its usually an exaggeration but after a dozen years of coming to Greece I think Demosthenes may be right.

Maria smiles her slightly sad smile from across the front desk and welcomes me back, asks how my trip was and laughs, slides my key card and internet code across the desk and does a theatrical scan over my shoulder looking for Paula. Paula isn’t coming this trip I say and feel lonelier for having to say it aloud.

Its only 14:30, so shower, unpack and repack a six day bag are the next hours duties. I could nap but I know better. A nap is an invitation to your brain to wake you at 02:00 so you can listen to the dogs bark for two hours until you finally shower and go downstairs in search of coffee at 04:30.

I have found my back to back.The pilot I will replace. It is good to see him if only for an hour or so. I listen to his accounts of firefighting, flights, customer interactions,helicopter condition, mechanic interaction, management, latest changes to procedure, rumors, standby day discoveries of places I have seen but he had not and then I borrow his car to go get groceries. We hope to have dinner with the on duty pilots this evening but they are out on a fire and maybe they will be overnighting away, who knows where.

Back at the hotel I stuff a few store-able food items into my six day bag.Duty days are very long here. Greek breakfasts are mostly coffee, cigarettes and a look around the room for something not wrapped in plastic but fruit stand castoffs is about it. Breakfast is definitely not the most important meal of the day in this country and lunch is late at about 14:30. About 10 hours after what should have been breakfast. I carry food in my six day bag because a fire call at say 11:00 will mean that you will not see food till after arriving back somewhere at 22:30 and  let me do the math for you on that. A sad excuse for breakfast at 04:30 and pork souvlaki on a stick at 22:30 is 18 hours between meals. Greeks eat late but sleep in as well. We do not.

I decide to skip the evening meal that will be running late. The crew arrived at 5 minutes before dark. I saw the crane pass overhead on the way to the airport 2 minutes away. A phone call has told me to expect a first light departure so a snack and bed for me.

Preflight in the dark and the other pilot is telling me about the fire he was on and will likely get to launch on to in about 15 minutes.It will be 30 minutes before sunrise.We do our CRM  in the cockpit as the call comes in which launches us off to the bathroom because it may only be a 15 minute call and launch window but a 2 hour flight on a coffee bloated bladder that will make it an hour and forty five minutes is no bueno.

Line up and wait, the tower lady sounds sleepy and I have told her that I plan to lift in one minute at first light. We get penalized by the minute for every minute the customer wants to penalize us for, for more reasons and well, that is a story for when I no longer want to work here.

Off we go in the semi darkness over the sea and down the coast talking to a couple of miltary airbases and Athena information on the radio as we brief what we know and listen to other aircraft on their way to our fire.The language spoken is Greek but with my limited skills and the help of the interpreter I know that 3 other aircraft will be joining the party. The fire is near the ancient city of Corinthos. Corinthos was the sometime home of the Apostle Paul who was a pretty good local tent maker and big fan of Jesus although it likely cost him his head to the Romans who later dug up his bones and built a Basilica around his grave in Vatican City where the Pope lives like a king, quoting the scripture of a man who probably never owned more than two pairs of sandals at one time.

But I digress.

The fire is looking manageable but our Greek interpreter in the back seat tells of a fire near Ourenopoulis. We have to go. Right now. Ourenopoulis is on Agion Oros which houses the monasteries of Mount Athos. It is the oldest surviving monastic community in the world. It is a monastic republic and like the folks in Vatican City is its own Republic. The difference is they have no roads, no electricity, nothing has changed there in a thousand plus years and you guessed it, no fire department. We are it!

We fly the fires at Ourenopoulis till dark.Priests in black robes and long grey beards are out on the fire line with hoes. Priests in flowing robes fly down the coastline on boats and wave to us as we snorkel load after load of salt water around a previously burnt and now re burnt monastery.

The original fire was in 1622 and again in the early nineties and now, so this place is not lucky.

We help the crew chief tie down and post flight and off to the hotel we go. Its 22:00 and my hotel room is hot and I need something to eat. The standby pilot is at the hotel, he has spent a nice day driving for too many hours and tells us that the rooms will never cool down, the food is crap but the beer is cold except its well within the eight hour bottle to throttle window so I can watch my buddy have a beer and swear at the P.O.S. computer try to connect to the internet so we can send off our operating report that must arrive in the morning email. Total flight time for the day was 10.5 hours, so take that jet lag, you evil fatigue causing bastard. At least I will get a sweat soaked nap and wake 5 hours later to no breakfast and another 10. 5 hour flight day and a duty day exceeding 17 hours. The third day is a standby day and I can try to recover. I will rest but that second day takes its toll. Well, only 18 more days to go and we fight fires on everyone of the 18 days except one. Yup, Greece is no vacation.

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.
— Helen Keller.

Recently a friend had asked me if fighting fires with the Helitanker was different from country to country? It is different for the obvious reasons, in the same way that Italy is different from Australia or Greece or Canada. Our flying methods and procedures are solidly set and most aviators will tell you that getting creative is a post flight item for discussion. Nobody wants to be with a pilot, who during some hectic firefighting, says,”well I’ve never tried this before, but”….
We stick pretty close to S.O.P. and nothing is done in the cockpit without telling the other pilot and/or crew person.However, each country has differences that cause you as the P.I.C.’s to modify your plans.Australia has a largely volunteer firefighting force who are trained and eager. Greece has a trained and dedicated firefighting force and a sometimes huge amount of citizenry on the fire line . Professional actions are usually predictable but with people defending their own property anything can happen. The following is a previous post about what firefighting with a Helitanker in Athens Greece is all about.

Summertime and the living isn’t always easy, here in Greece. My assignment is firefighting with an Erickson Air Crane based in Athens. The flying we do with this impressive aircraft is called I.A. or initial attack. It is a simple program, get to the fire as quickly as possible and put it out.

You may think that this is the case for firefighting aircraft and personnel everywhere but I assure you it is not. It has been a very busy season protecting the City, the Attica region and the Cyclades Islands. By some accounts it has been a failure.

Our critics have been screaming on television for a couple of weeks now about the Hellenic Fire Brigade’ s inability to stop a wildfire that burned much of Parnitha, a National Park and Mountain overlooking Athens to the North West. I can take some satisfaction in knowing that I did some of my best flying on that fire and other fires in the area. The talking heads on the T.V. and so called experts can analyze, criticize and belittle the efforts of the firefighters on the ground and in the air. It is their democratic right and in a election year I would expect no less.

It is probably a good thing that I can not understand most of what is being said on television. In more than 20 years of aerial firefighting in 6 countries I have seen a lot of firefighting operations but none more aggressive than the Greeks. The following is a recent example of a fire in Athens. To say that Athens is a concrete jungle with just a few green islands in the city is no exaggeration.

Athens looking North

An afternoon dispatch call comes in for a fire in the south east side of Athens. We could see the smoke as we quickly got our flight suits on and jumped in the Crane. Our usual crew of two pilots and a pilot/interpreter in the back. The pilot/interpreter has the unenviable task of sorting out calls from three radios in two languages from numerous ground personnel, 6 other aircraft and cell phone calls from SKED our controlling agency.

The fire was quickly running through a tree covered hillside within a residential neighborhood of primarily apartment buildings. In the 15 minutes since we had launched, the ground forces had begun their defense with numerous pumper trucks and more personnel on the ground than we could possibly keep track of down in the tress.

We would have to make our drops with enough force to be effective on the crowning fire in the trees but not get a direct hit on any personnel. In Greece that is an even bigger challenge than elsewhere in the world. Along with keeping track of 4 Canadair water bombers, A Mil 26 with a 200′ line and bucket and another SkyCrane sent to help just minutes behind us we also had the citizens of this Athens community pitching in on the fire line. It is a common sight to see local residents with wet towels and T shirts pummeling the flames on the flanks and even the head of the fire in some cases. We hit the fire and the residual spray wets down the people and their fire towels and they run back into the fire line. I have never seen that any where else in the world. Its both impressive and frightening. We carry about 6 tonnes of water for each drop, the Canadair water bombers are about the same, the Mil 26 is a bit more. At any rate its enough water to flatten a car let alone a citizen in a pair of shorts and a soot blackened T-shirt. On this day the locals were working on the flanks of the fire only. The Fire Brigade was fighting the head of the fire and we were doing our best to get under the column of smoke, clear the numerous wires and drop on the fast advancing front. It was not going good and the Fire Brigade had been forced to back away from one road to another as the fire jumped each successive road. The fire was on the lee side of a hill crowning in the tree tops with 20′ to 30 ‘ flame heights. The Hellenic Fire Brigade had leap frogged their trucks and personnel to the last fire break before the apartment buildings. The line had been drawn. It was a little 14’ wide dirt road at the bottom of the hill. Behind the fire crew and their trucks stood about 100 people between the tree line and their apartments. Many people stood with dripping towels over their arms and I could tell by their hand gestures that they were shouting down to the Fire Brigade below. If you think for a second they were shouting encouragement to the fire crews, you don’t understand Athenians. They were probably shouting, stop that fire *#*^+# or we will be beating out more than just the fire!

Time for one more drop along the front then back to the sea for another load of water. Our return time would be about 9 minutes. The Fire Brigade stood along the road wetting down the close vegetation and waiting for the flames. The other aircraft were also heading to the sea for water and I said to the other pilot that I thought we would be fighting the new fire line at the apartments. The fire brigade would stand their ground but I was fairly certain the fire would spot over them or burn over them. I thought about what it would be like to see that flame front coming at you as you stood with a water hose and waited.

It occurred to me as we returned with our load of water that some of these people on the fire line may have had ancestors that had fought at places like Marathonas. Back in about 490 B.C. a hugely overwhelming force of Persians had landed on the plains of Marathon prepared to kick some Athenian ass. They did. The Persians killed almost 200 Athenians and lost about 6400 Persians doing it. That took the fight right out the world conquering Persians and they sailed for home.

We got over the fire a couple of minutes later. A black line stopped cleanly at the little dirt road and no fire spotted over the line. People at the apartments were waving towels and blankets, a few citizens on the fire flanks were waving their shirts. The fire Brigade was picking up tools and hoses and moving away. The job wasn’t over yet and there would be areas to mop up and wet down.

We spent another two hours flying the fire perimeter putting out flare ups and keeping things cool. Mission accomplished and back to our base. At the base we sat in front of the t.v. with a cold drink watching the news channel and listening to the experts scream at each other about the fires.

“What are they mostly saying?” I asked the interpreter. He just waved his hand in the universal back hand of dismissal. More bull shit.

The talking heads can have their say. I have been flying on fires for a lot of years and I’ll fight fires with these folks any day.

I wrote a blog a while ago about some firefighting I did in Northern Saskatchewan . I worked in many small towns and villages and most of them were pleasant experiences. A few towns were less than pleasant and one of them was Buffalo Narrows.

https://heligypsy.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/same-tribe-different-town

I referred to Buffalo Narrows as the shithead capitol of Northern Saskatchewan. That is how I perceived the place in 1989. I find that my perception of places is colored not so much by what I see, but from the people I meet in the place I am visiting.

Buffalo Narrows has no doubt changed over the years and perhaps for the better. I received several invitations to visit Buffalo Narrows to reacquaint myself with the area or to receive the beating I deserved for maligning the town.

To the few people who offered to show me around and allow me to view the town they love, Thank You. If I am ever back your way I’ll do just that.

To the vast majority of you who cursed me, threatened me, questioned my sobriety and my inability to date native women and accused me of using an alias, well what can I say. You are still very much like most of the foul mouthed drunks I met walking the streets of your sad little town.

Keith Gill