On April 10, while the Fort McCoy prescribed burn team was finishing a prescribed burn, Wisconsin Army National Guard UH-60 Black Hawk aircrew members from the 1st Battalion, 147th Aviation Regiment, trained to drop water on wildfires.
The Colorado State University Center for Environmental Management of Military Lands, the Directorate of Plans, Training, Mobilization and Security, the Fort McCoy Directorate of Emergency Services Fire Department, the Directorate of Public Works Environmental Division Natural Resources Branch, and the Directorate of Plans, Training, Mobilization and Security are all represented on the burn team.
The Fort McCoy team collaborated with the Black Hawk chopper and crew to conduct water drops on particular areas during a managed burn at Training Area B-18 close to Badger Drop Zone on South Post.
The Forestry Office of the DPW’s NRB’s Fort McCoy Forester Charles Mentzel reported that everything went “very well.” They gave us positive feedback, and everything went well too. They were successful in completing six drops. They claimed to have trained two or three pilots. And the planned burn helped us achieve our objective of returning that region to an oak savannah.
Mentzel said that the burn also lessened the area’s fire hazards.
The Black Hawk crew took hundreds of litres of water from Big Sandy Lake on South Post for the training exercise on April 10 before flying a short distance to the drop zone.
The bucket training enables the Black Hawk flying crews to hone their wildfire response abilities.
Fort McCoy, located in the upper Midwest, is the lone American Army installation in Wisconsin. The organization’s motto is “Total Force Training Center.” Since 1984, the base has assisted in providing field and classroom training for more than 100,000 military members from all services almost every year.
