All-night maintenance work allowed helicopter to keep flying

The County of San Diego’s two firefighting helicopters are subject to being taken out of service for maintenance.

Annual maintenance work grounds each helicopter for three to four weeks, usually during the April-May timeframe when wildfire risk in the county is lowest.

In addition to the annual maintenance, a three-day maintenance period is required after every 100 hours of operation. Those maintenance requirements mean that only one helicopter is operational during the other helicopter’s servicing.

That maintenance period after every 100 hours also means that the100-hour threshold could be reached while helicopters are fighting a multi-day fire such as the fires which devastated San Diego County late last year.

“It did happen during the fires,” said Charlie Campe, the Sheriff’s Department captain in charge of emergency services.

That left the possibility of one of the helicopters being down for three days during the time it was most needed. But the maintenance period of two or three days is the normal down time. “That’s not with the whole maintenance crew working together,” Campe said.

The maintenance crew adjusted their schedules for the emergency. “They all attacked it as a team, worked on it all night and had it up the next morning,” Campe said. “They worked very tirelessly.”

Expediting the maintenance was not within the normal budget parameters. “Obviously it was somewhat expensive,” Campe said.

“It can be done,” Campe said. “The whole team worked on it as opposed to a couple of mechanics.”

All but one maintenance crew member adjusted their schedules to work on the helicopter that night. One maintenance worker was kept off the all-night work so that he would be available during the day. “We always want to keep someone on duty,” Campe said.

The helicopter was ready for another 100 hours of operation the following morning.

“We kept it flying,” Campe said. “We’re looking at obviously keeping the aircraft up.”

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors authorized the purchase of two fire and life safety helicopters in July 2004, assigning operational control of those helicopters to the Sheriff’s Department at that time.

The Sheriff’s Department took delivery of two Bell 205 A-1 helicopters on June 27, 2005.

The two helicopters have 375-gallon buckets, and the helicopter based at Gillespie Field also has a hoist for rescue operations.