Wyoming Built That New Air/Fire Base Just In Time

That new air/fire base at the Casper Natrona County Airport could not have come at a better time.

Every so often we have a bad fire season.

That's part of what comes with living out west.

The summer of 2023 was wet and green across the region. That was a good year.

But we all know that another fire year was coming.

This year was a hard one for Wyoming and surrounding states.

In the video below we find out just how much we needed it.

This year the new station flew out over 856,000 gallons of fire retardant

Before the new facility, they were not able to reload large air tankers.

Last year they flew 34,000 gallons.

That's quite a difference.

When the SEAT and LAT Base had their ribbon cutting in June, no one knew the devastating fire season that lay ahead.

The tiny station at the Casper Airport has been upgraded just in time for what was to come this year.

Get a load of the planes that they were able to service this year.

It can’t be a Large Air Tanker (LAT) base without large air tankers!

This big sucker is made for serious fires.

It's parked at the new firefighting facility at the Casper Natrona County International Airport.

There are smaller firefighting airplanes parked there, but sometimes we need the big boys.

This plane was at the airport this weekend.

But it quickly flew up to Montana to help with a big fire up there.

The Casper/Natrona County International Airport does a lot more than just fly people to and from Denver.

Cargo comes and goes. Military, corporate, and private planes of all sizes stop to refuel. It has a large private pilot community.

For several years the two firefighting planes would arrive for fire season and park in a temporary area on the east corner of the airport.

They would run a long hose from a fire hydrant to a holding tank to refill the planes for another fire run.

At the end of the fire season, they would pack up and go home.

Now, they have a permanent base at the airport, and they no longer need to run a long hose to a fire hydrant.

After six years of planning, designing, and construction, the Airport grounds are now the home base for a new BLM Single Engine Air Tankers (SEAT) and Large Air Tankers (LAT) Base.

HOLD ON- what is a SEAT and LAT base?

It's a base that loads firefighting aircraft with anything they need, from water to chemicals, to fight fires. That's the most simple, nontechnical explanation there is.

The facility was constructed in Collaboration with BLM, Wyoming State Forestry Division, and U.S. Forest Service.

It is the only base in the country jointly built by the BLM and the U.S. Forest Service.

Below is an exciting video of a firefighting plane from Casper in action.

Casper is also the exclusive home to two SEAT planes, contracted by the Wyoming State Forestry Division.

The modernized base now has the ability to load two planes (SEAT and/or LAT) at the same time with a maximum daily output of 80,000–90,000 gallons of mixed retardant compared to the previous 15,000-gallon output.

Future plans include the construction of a new heli-base adjacent to the SEAT/LAT base for the State Forestry Division.