On Sunday 20 September a Eurocopter AS332L1 Super Puma working water-bucket drops on Yosemite’s Dome Fire went down southeast of Ostrander Lake, about 14:55 local. Both people aboard were killed. Fly Precision of McMinnville, Oregon, also called Precision, named them as Greg King, 56, of Palmer, Alaska, and Ryan Cutter of Park City, Utah. The Forest Service said the ship was on a federal contract. The fire had started near Wawona on 15 September and by midweek was more than 3000 acres, thinly contained, in country that needs aircraft because the ground cannot always walk it. The NTSB will write a preliminary within 30 days and has said investigators will reach the site when fire allows. Cause is not known.
An ordinary operating day on a fire like Dome is a loop. A drop zone is chosen from a briefing that is already hours old. Air attack and ground crews talk on frequencies that smoke and terrain eat. The Super Puma lifts a load, climbs just enough, runs in low, dumps, turns for the pond or the dip site, does it again. Heat thins the air. Payload is a negotiation with density altitude. Visibility inside the column is a guess. Temporary bases are gravel and a fuel truck. Duty clocks stretch across a campaign, not a single sortie. Contract operators live inside procurement rules written in winter and flown in September. After the tenth run the strain is not cinematic. It is the next frequency, the next wire, the next turn.
King had flown Alaska fires, colleagues called him a legend in that small world. Cutter’s family described a husband and godfather. Their last load was one more trip in a system that asks private crews to work the same air as the flame. The investigation will sort metal and weather. The living question is whether drop clearance, rest, maintenance at spike camps and oversight of the contract keep pace with the fire that will not wait. Rest in peace.