A ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday celebrated the Santa Maria Air Tanker Base’s major expansion to faster aircraft loading capability, new crew amenities and an upstairs operations room to support aerial firefighting across the western United States.
With the project planned for years and finally completed this summer, Los Padres National Forest officials had to delay the celebration several weeks because of the significant Gifford Fire last month east of Santa Maria.
The base has operated at the Santa Maria Airport since 2007 but was previously limited primarily to the building’s first floor, according to Los Padres National Forest Unit Aviation Officer Brian Sexton.
The $540,000 renovation was funded by the federal government and carried out by the Central Coast Jet Center, which completed construction in six months in cooperation with the airport, Sexton said.
“In the last month, they put on the finishing touches, like the radio and internet hookups,” Sexton said. “We were planning on [moving] in August, but we had the Gifford Fire, which kind of delayed it.”
The Santa Maria Air Tanker Base serves as a regional hub for aerial firefighting, supplying aircraft with fire retardant and coordinating missions across California and the western United States. Crews load multiple types of air tankers on site, from smaller Cal Fire S2s to Very Large Air Tankers (VLATS) such as the DC-10.
“At the height of the Gifford and Madre fires, we’re hosting up to 10 to 12 air tankers at a time here,” Sexton said.
While the base could already accommodate that range of aircraft, the former operations room was limited in both space and visibility. The new upstairs layout supports additional staff and features large windows that give air attack supervisors a better vantage point to coordinate aircraft movements.
“You get the great bird’s-eye view to see the whole operation,” Sexton said.
Tanker base manager Miguel Quiz called the new room the “brain of our operations” and described the additional space as one of the base’s biggest upgrades.
“It gives us the space, the flexibility to breathe — and operate with minimal distractions,” he said.
On the tarmac, Sexton said the expansion focused on increasing the speed and volume of retardant delivery. The base added a fourth loading pit to its previous three, allowing for the simultaneous loading of multiple aircraft.
“We can get a DC-10 loaded, fueled and airborne in about 16 to 19 minutes,” he said. “It’s way, way faster.”
That efficiency is critical, Sexton said, as Santa Maria is one of only three bases in California equipped to handle the DC-10 VLAT, along with the San Bernardino Airtanker Base and Cal Fire’s McClellan Reload Base in Sacramento.
The facility upgrades also dramatically improve conditions for the transient pilots and support crews, who Sexton said can push the base’s population up to 60 or even more than 100 during major wildfires.
The added amenities are meant to provide not only workspace, but a place for rest and recovery amid long deployments and exhausting flight schedules.
“There are places to plug in. There’s Wi-Fi,” he said. “There’s a kitchen downstairs. You know, they’re on the road eating out of restaurants for months. It’s nice for them to be able to have the normal things that tanker bases have.”
The new conference room doubles as a training space, which Quiz said the previous base lacked.
“We can actually sit in there in the ops room. We can use the technology to dig in through our training. We can talk scenarios. We can use whiteboards. We can move aircraft and people around,” he said.
Sexton said training ramps up during the off-season, when many base personnel help teach classes ranging from basic firefighting to advanced incident command and aerial supervision.
The ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new facility also served to honor the contributions of key personnel. Air Attack Officer Alex Ihle was presented with the peer-voted Aviator of the Year Award for his professionalism and dedication.
Special recognition was also given to Yolanda Saldana, a retired Los Padres fire official who was instrumental in getting the project approved in 2018. She said the completion marked the fulfillment of a long-term goal.
“It’s really great to see that our aviators now have a facility that they deserve to work and operate out of,” Saldana said. “A long time coming, but all good things always happen if you just keep at it.”