As of today, the Armed Forces is also relying on one of its fixed-wing aircraft to fight the forest fire in Lower Austria: the Pilatus PC-6 equipped with a thermal imaging camera (airborne infrared sensor technology). It is intended to support the emergency services with aerial images.
Aerial photographs are taken of the fire area in order to pinpoint the hot spots. With the PC-6, it is possible to observe the area from the air for hours. At present, countless pockets of embers are still being tracked down and extinguished by the forces deployed.
“The advantage of using the Pilatus PC-6 is that the images can be transmitted directly from the air to the operations center. This enables the emergency services to quickly identify pockets of fire and extinguish them with pinpoint accuracy,” says Defense Minister Klaudia Tanner.
The army has been on standby for days (Militär Aktuell reported) in continuous operation against the forest fire in the Rax region: a total of two Black Hawks, two Augusta Bell 212s, an Alouette 3 and, from today, the army’s Pilatus PC-6, together with helicopters from the Ministry of the Interior and a helicopter from Slovakia (a civilian Mi17 helicopter), two fire-fighting aircraft from Italy (Canadair company), two helicopters from the German armed forces (Sikorsky CH53) and a civilian helicopter (Knaus company) are supporting the emergency services in the fight against the major fire.
“The cooperation between our armed forces and the civilian emergency services is running smoothly. Our soldiers are working for hours together with the fire department, police and aircraft from our neighboring countries to extinguish the embers and flames. I wish all the emergency services and the civilian helpers continued stamina and every success in continuing to fight the forest fire,” added Tanner.
Since the beginning of the mission, the pilots of the Austrian Armed Forces have already been able to drop more than 3.3 million liters of water over the fire, with 1,941 landings required for this. In total, the air force has flown almost 190 flight hours.
Here for more army news and here to further news about Pilatus.
