I live near the Santa Maria CA airport. It is a fire base for attack planes.

[upaloopa]

They have been flying every day for months.

There are two DC10s and a bunch of smaller 4 engine jets and a C130.

Today they are taking off just minutes appart.

There has been a least one fire burning somewhere near hear for the last couple of months.

[tonyt53]

1. Stay safe!

[pinboy3niner]

2. I've flown in and out of there a few times and that is a very small airport

I would have guessed they'd use Vandenburg AFB.

[Major Nikon]

3. The long runway there is significantly longer than Laguardia

Also significantly longer than Midway in Chicago and the Ronnie Raygun airport in DC.

[dembotoz]

4. happy that water bill is not in my name

[upaloopa]

5. They drop foscheck. It is an orange red fire retardant.

They are not trying to put out the fire they are trying to keep it from spreading.

They drop it near homes and buildings if they are in the fire's path.

[Stinky The Clown]

6. Wasn't that originally a military (Army Air Corps?) field?

[upaloopa]

8. Yes during WWII it was a P38 training base.

[Hekate]

7. It's just no fun, is it? About 3:30 yesterday I was driving home and saw pyrocumulus ...

...over the mountain by Hwy 154. At that time it was figured to be only 100 acres or so, and now it's 2,700.

I have been a little surprised that there hasn't been the continuous coming and going of the borate bombers flying overhead from Santa Barbara Airport, but according to your observation they must have decided to use SM as the main base. We've had a few; just not nearly as much as usual.

One of my friends used to live in one of the cabins off Paradise Road -- I'm glad she decided to retire down here.

[upaloopa]

9. They moved the fire base from Santa Barbara to Santa Maria.

The planes just take off, dump, return and take off again all day long

There is so much smoke in the air that we have a haze and at sunset the sun is red.

[Hekate]

12. And now it's about 11,000. I'm hoping to get a coherent update.

Just took a walk around the neighborhood and the amount of smoke from behind the mountain is ...impressive. We could watch it grow as we walked. God help us if it crests the mountain and heads toward Santa Barbara.

[MicaelS]

10. Your title is confusing.

I read it as a combat fire base for combat attack aircraft. I was going WTF?

But otherwise an informative post.

[Hekate]

11. CA is the ZIP Code abbreviation for California, which I guess you figured out

[upaloopa]

13. The planes sttack the fire. I think the pilots get an attack card