Three years after lawmakers allocated $30 million to purchase its first “Firehawk,” the modified military helicopter that is capable of quickly crisscrossing Colorado to detect and douse flames is finally ready for action.
But that doesn’t mean it will be called to attack the next wildfire that sparks as overgrown fuels dry up in the stifling summer heat.
Highly specialized training for four primary pilots is complete but whether the one-of-a-kind aircraft is called to the next fire depends on what other resources are available nearest to the fire, said Mike Morgan, director of Colorado’s Division of Fire Prevention and Control.
“We’ll send the closest available helicopter,” Morgan said. “It might be a large air tanker, might be a single-engine tanker, depending on what the fire is doing — it’s different tools in the toolbox. Sometimes you need a hammer, sometimes you need a screwdriver, and so that’s why we have a wide array of resources.”
The state’s second Firehawk, which was purchased last year, arrived in Colorado at the end of June and is expected to be operational by August 2025, Morgan said.
The first chopper — purchased at $26 million plus more to cover operational costs — was highly anticipated, as officials told the public it would go into service earlier this year to help Colorado fight fires, which are becoming larger and more frequent as climate change causes dangerously dry conditions across the Western U.S.
The purchase of Firehawks was part of the state’s push to rely less on rented aircraft to fight wildfires. In 2020, for instance, when Colorado had the three largest wildfires in its history, the state struggled to secure the aircraft it needed because there were also fires burning in California, New Mexico, and several other states.
When the first one was purchased in 2021, it had not been built yet, Morgan said. This particular model was built in Poland, shipped to Texas and then brought to Colorado, where it was disassembled as a military aircraft and then rebuilt with new technology to be able to fight fires.
Then after a delay in delivery, the engine was recalled, Morgan said.
“And so there were a bunch of things that just weren’t going quite right for us,” Morgan said.
The first Firehawk is stationed at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Jefferson County, but can be moved anywhere in the state based on fire conditions, he said. State officials are still working to determine the location of the second Firehawk.
The Firehawk can fly at 160 mph when empty and 140 mph with a full load of water.
The Firehawk was not called to the Interlaken fire, which ignited June 11 after a campfire was not properly doused near Twin Lakes before growing to more than 700 acres, because it wasn’t the nearest resource, Morgan said.
“When a fire happens, we’re going to send the closest available one because that’s what makes the most sense, to get water on the fire the soonest,” he said. “If we had a big fire in Durango tomorrow, would the Firehawk be the first aircraft to be deployed to it? No, because it’d fly over the top of six other helicopters before it ever got there.”
“Catch it before it gets big”
The Firehawk will give Colorado’s firefighters “a leg up” in their initial attack and boost their chances of stopping a fire while it’s still small, Morgan said.
A traditional firefighting helicopter must fly to a landing zone near the fire, hook a bucket up to the bottom of the helicopter, identify a water supply and then avoid flying over subdivisions and homes due to the weight it’s carrying.
“They’re quick, but by the time you go and land and hook things up, identify a water supply, close roadways and start bucket operations, you’ve got a delay in time,” Morgan said. “The Firehawk helicopter is different.”
The Firehawk, which has a 1,000-gallon tank attached, doesn’t have the same restrictions of not being able to fly over roadways or subdivisions, he said. It also has a snorkel that allows fire crews to fill the tank without ever landing.
It can also refill its tank in about a minute or less before returning to the fire.
“Catch it before it gets big — if we stop this unwanted fire before it gets big, and before we lose 1,000 homes, and before we deal with flooding and mudslides for the next five years, we’re saving millions and millions of dollars by being proactive with our investment,” Morgan said.
“And that’s what this whole thing is really about. It’s about reducing the impacts of these big fires by providing early intervention to the unwanted fires.”
Based on a five-year average, Colorado will spend $20 million for large fires with 10% of overall costs going toward fire suppression, he said.
“When you take a fire that we find when it’s small and we send a Firehawk helicopter to it and we put it out, those numbers don’t ring true,” he said. “We’re spending a little bit of money today and we’re saving millions on the back end.”
Colorado has several contracts with firefighting aircraft and positions them around the state depending on which area is seeing the highest frequency of fires and where people and homes are at highest risk.
Colorado’s growing aerial firefighting fleet also plays a role in reducing the rising insurance rates across the state, Morgan said. Coloradans are facing 50% to 100% price hikes for home and car insurance — or cancellation altogether — as climate disasters mount.
“If we don’t stop these large fires from turning into conflagration burning hundreds of homes, we’re not going to be able to get insurance,” Morgan said. “So this is an investment in a lot more than just helicopters. It’s much bigger than that.”
Fire outlook for the summer
Above-average snowpack levels across the state and a very wet spring and early summer is good news for Colorado’s fire year. But that moisture also translates to overgrown grasses that will soon dry out and become fire fuel, Morgan said.
There are also a lot of dead ponderosa and lodgepole trees that have been killed by the nefarious, burrowing mountain pine beetles.
“With the dead trees, that’s already ready to go. All it takes is for the light fuels to dry out, to carry it to those and we’re in trouble,” Morgan said.
It’s unclear how long the moisture is expected to last into the summer months, but forecasts suggest that southeastern Colorado could have higher than normal fire activity this year, he said.
Southwestern Colorado is also getting a lot of moisture, but that could quickly dry up later in the summer, too. That part of the state saw its snowpack disappear much earlier than usual this season because of a rare, sudden and large melt in late April.
“We don’t have a lot of good data to tell us what’s going to happen as we transition from the moisture patterns,” Morgan said. “But we’re hopeful we can keep enough moisture to keep the light fuels green and then hopefully get a big snowpack to push it down so it doesn’t just end up being fuel for next spring.”