State Forestry Officially Unveiled a $7.5m Helibase at Casper Airport — Here’s What It Does
After brief remarks from Gov. Mark Gordon and state fire officials, the Wyoming State Forestry Division opened the doors Thursday to its new helibase, a $7.5 million facility designed to become the new home of Wyoming’s helicopter-borne firefighting operation.
Billed as a “first-of-its-kind” facility in Wyoming, the centrally located base will provide aerial support to firefighting operations across the state. It will also replace the division’s aging helitack facility about six miles south of Glenrock, said aviation Program Manager Chris Fallbeck.
The new base, Gordon said, cost just more than $7.5 million. The investment gives the state’s aviation program more room, better infrastructure and a more capable home base for responding when wildfires ignite.
Dozens attended Thursday’s ceremony, mostly clad in state forestry or local fire department garb, which concluded with Gordon swinging a fire axe to cut a ceremonial ribbon and commence an open house.
“This is a first-of-its-kind facility in Wyoming,” Gordon said, later adding, “we’re much more efficient now in being able to respond.”
Fallbeck echoed much of that sentiment and offered praise to the “extreme hard work” of those who helped make the base a reality in a speech of his own.
Out with the old
Wyoming Forestry has maintained a helicopter firefighting operation since 2005, when crews launched and landed from Mike Sedar Park.
“The way they did that was, the city of Casper Fire Department supplied two crew members and a manager to the original ship,” said Craig Kidder, a pilot from those days who now works for state forestry and was at Thursday’s ceremony. “… they had the ship in the park across the street from fire station No. 2, and we staffed it.”
The operation eventually moved to the Douglas Ranch, about six miles south of Glenrock, where the state established a helitack that remains the forestry division’s main base of operations today.
But the facility was never built to serve the program indefinitely. Aviation staff have lived in FEMA trailers installed in 2008, and Fallbeck said they have seen little meaningful updating since.
For years, the base did what the state needed it to do. Over time, though, maintenance demands mounted and the location became increasingly impractical. When it came time to invest in the facility, officials faced a larger question: keep remodeling the old base or build somewhere new?
“They're just not built the same construction standards as a stick build house or manufactured home, and so the maintenance and the upkeep of those housing units, it was just getting too cost prohibitive,” Fallbeck pointed out.
On top of that, costs of keeping up with technology advancements became difficult. Internet couldn’t be hard-lined into the buildings, so they rely on mobile internet services like Starlink or Jetpack to connect to essential services, Fallbeck said. Those are both more expensive than traditional wired internet.
When conversations started about remodeling the old base, it quickly became clear it was time to move on.
In with the new
The word “new” doesn’t fully do justice to the helibase, which just had helicopters parked in its hangar for the first time Thursday.
The hangar was one of a few major improvements Fallbeck pointed to as major changes. The old base had no covered storage areas for helicopters through winter, so forestry would have to “broker a deal” with an airport to protect the aircraft during storms, Fallbeck said.
The helibase also has revamped living quarters for aviation staff. Fallbeck anticipates that will help with recruitment.
“One of the things to maintain that competitive edge is that we decided long ago to offer free housing,” the manager noted. “So that that would be a carrot, if you will, for folks to try out a state program, since the federal programs are pretty much the ones that dominate the aviation world.”
Fallbeck’s favorite feature isn’t really much of one at all; technically speaking, you could argue it’s an absence thereof.
“I’ve got space for probably the first time, which is weird saying because we operate out of a working ranch, so there’s a lot of space outside,” he said.
“I have a briefing room space for all my seasonals, even at the height of season when we have a max capacity … I have adequate space,” Fallbeck added. “We’re not all on top of each other. There's room for physical fitness equipment that can be utilized year-round by the permanents, and enough equipment to be able to support having [seasonals].”
Those internet woes have also been solved.
“[On] the information and technology side, the ETS side of our house,” the manager said, “we will have access to all of the files here, and shared drives and Google drives that we did not have the same access to at the previous facility because it could not be hard lined in.”
Helicopters will often save a trip, since they’ll always be able to refuel where they’re based, which wasn’t always the case before. Pilots are safer if someone crashes or a fire breaks out, because specialized help — the airport’s Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting crew — is much closer.
Casper’s air tanker base is also nearby, keeping wildfire fighting forces close together.
“It’s great to have the state forestry helibase here with us, right across the runway from us, working closely with other fire units to be able to respond to fires,” Air Tanker Base Manager Darold Williams said. “[It’s] what we call almost a super base within the federal terms, where you have helicopter air support which is directly fighting fire with water and things of that nature and we have retardant over here.”
From humble origins, state forestry’s aviation program has come far.
“You know, after starting this program 23 seasons ago in a city park, I never would have thought that we’d get a brand-new facility or could have possibly even imagined the amount of support, coordination and cooperation and dedication to another state or agency’s program,” Fallbeck said during his Thursday afternoon address. “And it’s been decades now in the making, and I appreciate that to my heart.”
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