Sunday crashes of air tanker planes boost concerns

SALT LAKE CITY - Once a Cold War-era submarine attack plane, the Lockheed P2V has been for years both a mainstay of the nation's aerial firefighting arsenal and a cause for concern.

Flying in the turbulent, unforgiving skies above raging wildfires, the planes have crashed at least seven times from either mechanical problems or pilot error, causing 16 deaths, dating to 1990 when they were slowly added to the nation's firefighting fleet.

The latest crash in Utah, which killed two pilots, and a crash-landing by another one of the same planes in Nevada, both on Sunday, have renewed calls for the federal government to speed up efforts to modernize the nation's firefighting aircraft fleet used to drop fire retardant.

"As the air tanker fleet continues to atrophy, it's going to reduce the country's ability to get there early, which is why so many of these fires mushroom," Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., chairman of the forestry subcommittee, said Monday.

On Sunday, a tanker went down in western Utah as crews battled a lightning-sparked wildfire that jumped the Nevada border about 150 miles northeast of Las Vegas. Iron County Sheriff Mark Gower said Monday it appeared a wing tip hit the ground in a rocky canyon. The men's bodies were recovered later in the day.

By Monday, the fire had grown to 8,000 acres with 15 percent containment, authorities said. .

Another P2V, owned by Minden Air Corp. in Minden, was fighting a wildfire south of Reno on Sunday. Its crash-landing at Minden-Tahoe Airport was captured on video, with the plane dropping to its belly and sliding across the runway. No one was injured.