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Tanker base winds down, likely forever Mail Tribune / Bob Pennell Tanks holding 10,000 gallons each of fire retardant sit outside the command center at Medford's air tanker base. The base is closing, but it won't be dismantled for three months while supporters try to persuade the Forest Service to keep the base in Medford. Supporters of the Medford firefighting center have three months to make their case to the U.S. Forest Service By PAUL FATTIG Don Cavin made a point of watching the air tanker rumble out of the Medford airport on Monday. "It's sad, knowing that could be the last tanker to ever roll down this runway," observed the veteran manager of Medford's air tanker base. "That hit me pretty hard." Chances are the four-engine Lockheed P-3, owned by a contractor in Chico, Calif., won't be back at the base for the 2002 fire season. Citing budget concerns, Forest Service officials in the regional office in Portland earlier announced that the base will close permanently at the end of the 2001 fire season. Yet the agency left a window open a crack: It told the Jackson County commissioners and others fighting to save the base that it will delay dismantling the base for three months. Commissioner Jack Walker, who is leading the fight to persuade the Forest Service to reconsider its decision, said base supporters intend to make the most of those three months. "We want to take advantage of that time," he said. "We feel it is even more important now to keep it open. During these times of terrorist attacks, think what they could perpetrate on forestlands (in July and August). We need this base open." In an earlier interview, Jim Payne, regional aviation officer for the Forest Service, said it was unlikely the agency would rescind its decision. Funding availability limits southwestern Oregon to one air tanker base, he said, adding that the National Air Tanker Base study completed in 1996 concluded the Klamath Falls base is the best choice. Closing the Medford base will save about $1 million a year, he said. If it closes permanently, the plan calls for the dispatch center at the base to continue operating for about a year, then be transferred to a facility at the Bureau of Land Management's Medford District headquarters on Biddle Road. The old base would not be used as a spike (reload) base for tankers, officials said. Its closure would leave tanker bases in Klamath Falls, Redmond and LaGrande in Oregon, Redding in California and Moses Lake in Washington. Tankers from the base, which opened in the late 1950s, have covered the Cascade Range to the coast, and from Roseburg south just beyond Yreka. Cavin, who began working at the base as a member of a contract crew in 1982, then joined the Forest Service staff at the base in 1987, doesn't want to be dragged into the political debate. "Right now, we're just putting it to bed for the winter," said the 1975 graduate of Crater High School in Central Point. "We were told not to tear anything out so we're acting like, at least for the time being, that it will be here next year." But he allows he has enjoyed the nearly two decades of fire seasons he has spent at the base. "I've loved this job - it's the type of work where you like what you're doing and you feel like you're accomplishing something," he said. The base has drawn generations of firefighters over the years, he said. Cavin was literally baptized by fire in 1987 when he joined the Forest Service crew. That was the year more than 100,000 acres burned in southwestern Oregon. There were other ferocious fire seasons, including 1994, when the Hull Mountain Fire blackened the northwest portion of the Rogue Valley, killing one firefighter. "But this was our fourth biggest year in the past 20 years," he said. "We did a lot of work down in Northern California, and there was the Quartz Fire (in the Little Applegate River drainage), the Craggy Fire out in the Kalmiopsis Wilderness." About 1 million gallons of rusty red retardant was pumped into tankers deployed from the base this season, he said. At an average 2,500 gallons a load, that's roughly 400 tanker flights out of the base this year. With the current fire season winding down - although local fire officials stress that it will remain in effect until more rain drenches the area - Cavin and his crew are wrapping up what may be the base's last fire season. From the base's perspective, the tanker season is declared over when the last tanker crew operating in the region is released from duty, he explained. "There is still one tanker in Moses Lake (Wash.)," he said. "But, with this weather we're having, we're putting the place to bed now." Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or e-mail him at [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.