By Paul Rogers
Bay Area News Group
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — With summer wildfire season just around the corner, California’s fire officials on Thursday unveiled a powerful new tool to help reduce the risk of major fires racing out of control.
At a news conference with Gov. Gavin Newsom in Sacramento, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the state’s primary firefighting agency, rolled out a new C-130 Hercules cargo plane, which has been added to its already expansive firefighting fleet.
The plane, a 1984 model acquired from the U.S. Coast Guard, is a type used by the military since the 1950s as a workhorse to move soldiers and cargo. Cal Fire crews retrofitted the huge plane — whose 133-foot wingspan is a little larger than that of a modern Boeing 737 — to carry 4,000 gallons of fire retardant, more than triple the capacity of the other tankers that CAL FIRE has been using for years.
The plane is the second C-130 in CAL FIRE’s aviation fleet. The first one, a 1985 former Coast Guard model put into service last August, has been used heavily, flying 90 missions, responding to 36 fires and dropping 253,702 gallons of retardant ever since.
Capable of flying 800 miles at speeds up to 368 mph, the C-130 has the greatest speed and range in the state’s airborne fleet.
“The quicker we can put retardant on the ground, the quicker we can slow a fire’s progress,” said CAL FIRE Deputy Director Nick Schuler. “The goal is to be in even the most remote parts of California in 20 minutes. The state is large. We want to respond quickly. We try to keep 95% of all fires at 10 acres or less.”
The first C-130 plane flew over the Los Angeles fires in January, and was called in last October when a brush fire started in the Oakland Hills, one day before the 33rd anniversary of the 1991 Oakland Hills Fire, which killed 25 people and destroyed 3,000 homes. The fire last year burned just 15 acres and seriously damaged two homes because firefighters were able to get it under control quickly.
The federal government plans to donate five other surplus C-130s to California in the coming years. The one unveiled last year is based at McClellan Airtanker Base near Sacramento. The new one Thursday will be located at Cal Fire’s base in Fresno, with another scheduled for CAL FIRE’s Ramona air base in San Diego County this summer, and the rest expected to arrive in 2026 and 2027 at Cal Fire bases in Chico, Paso Robles and McClellan.
California becomes the first state to own, maintain and operate its own C-130s for firefighting, though federal agencies like the U.S. Forest Service and private contractors have used them at times in the state.
Fire experts say tankers that can fly faster, farther and drop more fire retardant are a good thing, but not the only way to reduce fire risk in an era where hotter, drier weather from climate change is making wildfires more explosive.
“It’s great to have more resources for suppression, but the real battle is prevention,” said Leroy Westerling, a climate and fire scientist at UC Merced. “Managing vegetation to reduce fire exposure to your home, and having fire-resistant roof materials and screens on the attics are just as important. If you haven’t done that, you are just counting on them to save you.”
Nevertheless, Westerling said, the new planes are a good step.
“In years with bad conditions for wildfire — dry, hot, windy conditions over large areas of the state with potential ignitions at any time — some fires are going to get away,” he said. “But the state is doing what it can to expand its ability to save people’s homes and people’s lives. Resources like this help improve our odds.”
Each of the seven former Coast Guard planes that California is reusing for firefighting was acquired from the federal government at no cost when former President Joe Biden signed legislation pushed by former Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Sen. Alex Padilla, both Democrats, and Rep. Ken Calvert, R- Corona. They are given a $6.5 million retrofit job that includes adding the 4,000-gallon tank along with replacing the inner and outer wing boxes, or the parts of the plane that connect the wings to the fuselage, to strengthen them.
CAL FIRE already has 69 helicopters and planes, an assemblage that Newsom regularly refers to as the largest civil aerial firefighting fleet in the world.
Historically, more acres tend to burn in California after dry winters than after wet winters, when moisture levels of trees and brush remain higher for longer into the summer. Despite a wet winter in Northern California this year, however, California is off to a rough start in 2025.
Through Monday, there have been 851 wildfires that have burned 60,308 acres in California, killing 30 people and destroying 16,251 structures, according to CAL FIRE. That’s far more than the 2,840 acres that have burned on average during the previous five years by this time of year.
The reason?
Roughly 90% of the acres burned came in four fires in January in Los Angeles and San Diego counties, when dry conditions combined with unusually fast Santa Ana winds, reaching up to 100 mph in some places, to create historic firestorms.
The Eaton Fire in Altadena and the Palisades Fire in Pacific Palisades killed 30 people and destroyed more than 18,000 homes.
Fire risk remains low now across most of the state. The Sierra Nevada is still covered in snow. Reservoirs are full. And rainfall totals north of I-80 are above average for the winter. Risk in Southern California, which received some storms this spring, but remains below average, is higher.
“All hands on deck,” Newsom said. “Our fire season never went away. But it’s about peak. Be prepared.”
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