Fire Retardant usage nearly triples

The average amount of fire retardant used during the past ten years has nearly tripled for the 2014 wildfire season.

The average jumped from 235,000 gallows of fire retardant to more than 800,000 in 2014.

Lonnie Allison of Medford Air Tanker Base manager says “it’s about the drought. We known this is the driest we’ve been in years and we’re right at the edge of that extreme dryness and it goes in to Northern California and all the way down.”

And fire drops aren’t the only increase for 2014, the nations only two DC-10 air tankers are using Medfords new V-LAT bases, the only Tarmak in the state capable of loading the next generation air tankers.

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