Aerial Firefighting Pioneer Dies
A pioneer in the aerial firefighting field has passed away (from ChicoER.com).
The man credited with giving birth to modern aerial firefighting died Monday in Chico. Joseph B. Ely was 94.As a forest control officer working in the Mendocino National Forest in the 1950s, Ely was interested in making wildfires safer to fight by attacking them from the air.
Others had tried with very limited results. But Ely, who saw 15 firefighters die in 1953 while fighting a Mendocino National Forest blaze from the ground, had a special incentive.
In 1995, Ely asked a Willows pilot if he could adapt a crop-dusting plane for aerial firefighting.
Vance Nolta concocted a gate, a dump valve and a mechanism to operate them from the cockpit of a Stearman 75 Kaydet.
With Ely looking on, Nolta tested the device on a small fire at the Willows Airport, and it worked.
The very first drop on a live fire came in August 1955, when the Stearman dumped 100 gallons of water on a crashed logging truck that had touched off a fire near Covelo.
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Ely was born in Pewaukee, Wis., in 1911. He graduated from Yale University in 1935 with a master's degree in forestry and spent his whole career with the Forest Service.
Our thoughts are prayers are with Joe's family.
