Frequent calls keep chopper pilots busy

Glacier Southern Lakes Helicopters chief pilot Andy Clayton (left) and general manager Matt Wong. Photo / Guy Williams

When Queenstown chopper pilot Andy Clayton is fighting a fire from the air, he says "there's a lot more going on than in a scenic flight".

Suspended beneath his machine is a bucket holding up to 1200 litres of water and weighing 1.2 tonnes.

He is thinking about how the fire is moving, what the wind is doing and where the ground crews are working — all the while talking over a radio to the other pilots in the air and the fire controller on the ground.

Now chief pilot for Glacier Southern Lakes Helicopters, Mr Clayton was a professional firefighter in Dunedin for 15 years before starting his flying career.

While that experience had given him a deep understanding of how fires behaved and the best place to attack them, every fire-fighting pilot in the resort was well-trained and equipped for the job, he said.

"We put an awful lot of money into training our guys and investment in R&D into the technology — the buckets, the foam gear, the radios.

"We make sure that when we go out and do it, it all works. Safety is paramount — for us, the people on the ground and the machines."

There has been no shortage of callouts for helicopter companies as the searing hot summer continues to ratchet up the fire risk in Central Otago and the Lakes District.

Choppers scrambled to several of the 30 call-outs in Otago and Southland on Tuesday alone. Among them was a grass fire at Jacks Point, Mr Clayton's second callout of the day.

While admitting the work had an excitement factor, that feeling was tempered by his experience of the "hideous" devastation fires could wreak on life and property.

"We don't sit around hoping there's going to be one. The thing about it is, it's a challenge to try to stop that fire."

Deputy principal rural fire officer for the Lakes District, Mark Mawhinney, said several helicopter companies in Queenstown and Wanaka were equipped to respond to fires.

He tried to share the workload; although they were recompensed for the financial costs involved, callouts could disrupt their obligations to other customers, such as tourists booked for sightseeing flights.

Mr Mawhinney said at this time of year he did not hesitate to put choppers in the air when the alarm was raised in areas like Queenstown's red zone — a high-risk area of urban and rural land between Bobs Cove and Arthurs Point, subject to a year-round fire ban.

"The consequences of a fire in those kinds of areas could be catastrophic in terms of life and property.

"Time is absolutely of the essence."