SAN ANTONIO – Through the smoke, you see them soaring -- Black Hawk helicopters were flying and dropping buckets of water onto the Das Goat fire.
“It is a very crew coordinated operation,” said CW3 Ryan Cantini, 1-108th Assault Helicopter Battalion.
Cantini, a UH 60 Black Hawks instructor pilot with the Texas Army National Guard, flew the Medina County mission over the weekend.
“We could almost see it from Austin where we took off, so we knew it was going to be big when we got there,” he said.
Four Black Hawks with four crew members each, two manning the “Bambi Bucket” for strategic water drops of 660 gallons below.
“We train for a bunch of different ways to drop water,” Cantini said. “But then every time you go back, and you get water and come back to the fire, it’s going to look completely different.”
The home-saving efforts are clear in the High Mountain Ranch Subdivision, where the Das Goat fire burned most intensely.
“That was just from one of the helicopter water drops from the pilots that’s just so skilled. Making sure that it didn’t damage the house but absolutely made sure the fire didn’t get to it,” ESD 1 Fire Chief Clint Cooke said.
That precision was put to the test. Large smoke plumes make for difficult flying conditions.
Cantini explains they also have to be hyper-aware of the other aircraft flying around them and the people on the ground.
“Especially the firefighters on the ground, those guys are there on the front line. And really what we do is to support them,” Cantini said.
While their mission in Medina County is through, fire danger across South Texas is high, reaching critical levels Wednesday.
The Texas Wildfire Incident Response website shows 13 active wildfires across the state.
“It’s not even really fire season yet. So to see this kind of activity already, we know it’s going to be pretty busy,” Cantini said.
It’s a challenge Cantini and his fellow crew members won’t shy away from.
“As far as we’re concerned, we don’t have a day off until they say they don’t need us anymore. And for us, that’s the end of fire season,” Cantini said.