Wisconsin Army National Guard UH-60 Black Hawk aircrew members with the Madison, Wis.-based 1st Battalion, 147th Aviation Regiment trained to drop water on wildfires April 10 using a Bambi bucket at Fort McCoy while the Fort McCoy prescribed burn team completed a prescribed burn.
The post prescribed burn team includes personnel with the Fort McCoy Directorate of Emergency Services Fire Department; Directorate of Public Works (DPW) Environmental Division Natural Resources Branch (NRB); Directorate of Plans, Training, Mobilization and Security; and the Colorado State University Center for Environmental Management of Military Lands who work in partnership with the post’s DPW team.
Personnel with the Fort McCoy prescribed burn team helped coordinate with the Black Hawk helicopter and crew to complete water drops on specific areas during a prescribed burn at Training Area B-18 near Badger Drop Zone on South Post.
Fort McCoy Forester Charles Mentzel with the Forestry Office of the DPW’s NRB said the training with the Wisconsin National Guard crews went well.
“It went very well,” Mentzel said. “Our feedback from them was that it went great, too. There were six drops that were accomplished by them. They told us they got two or three pilots trained. And the prescribed burn accomplished our goal of setting back that area to an oak savannah.”
Mentzel also said the prescribed burn helped to reduce fire hazards in the area.
For the April 10 training, Big Sandy Lake on South Post was used for a water source for the Black Hawk crew to draw their water from. From there it was only a few miles to the drop area where a prescribed burn was taking place.
According to the Wisconsin National Guard, the bucket training allows Black Hawk flight crews to sharpen their skills. Understanding how to use the bucket can be used to potentially assist the people in a fire emergency, such as a wildfire response.
In previous articles about this same kind of training, Mentzel described how Fort McCoy is an ideal place for the training. He said every time they complete the training it builds on a continuing relationship between the Fort McCoy prescribed burn team and the Wisconsin National Guard.
“We are a military training base, have the facilities to support the helicopters, and the land base to do the training,” Mentzel said in a past article. “The water sources also are on the installation, so helicopters don’t have to cross any public roadways while carrying water to the fire.”
More prescribed burns will likely take place across Fort McCoy during spring 2023 and later in the year as conditions permit.
Fort McCoy’s motto is to be the “Total Force Training Center.” Located in the heart of the upper Midwest, Fort McCoy is the only U.S. Army installation in Wisconsin.
The installation has provided support and facilities for the field and classroom training of more than 100,000 military personnel from all services nearly every year since 1984.
