Coulson Aviation has been awarded a $16 million firefighting contract to continue supporting Southern California’s Quick Reaction Force (QRF) year-round throughout 2024, with an option to continue through 2025.
The contract includes three Boeing CH-47 Chinook helitankers, a Sikorsky S-76 intelligence and recon helicopter, and flight and maintenance crews. The aircraft operate around the clock, with pilots using night vision goggles (NVGs) at night. While the aircraft are primarily dedicated to the QRF, they are available to support other local fire departments within the 50,000-sq-mi service area in Los Angeles, Orange, and Ventura counties.
The QRF is a fully equipped wildfire suppression program that launches at the first sign of fire. This is Coulson’s sixth year contracting with Southern California Edison (SCE) to support the QRF and its second year supporting it directly.
For the QRF, Coulson has flown over 700 hours—60 percent of that time at night using NVGs—and dropped more than 4.5 million gallons of water on just under 200 wildfires. Every fire Coulson fought with the QRF was successfully extinguished in its initial burn, with none expanding into large fires.
Coulson’s CH-47s are equipped with their own 3,000-gallon RADS-L delivery systems, which can hover fill in 90 seconds, as well as the company’s designed and manufactured retractable snorkel.