Casper/Natrona County Int’l Opens New Aerial Firefighting Base

Casper/Natrona County International Airport (CPR) in Wyoming recently led the charge to beef up aerial firefighting infrastructure on its airfield, teaming with two federal agencies to create a purpose-built facility that supports the intensifying fight against wildfires in the region.

The airport pieced together funding from the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service to create the Casper Interagency Air Tanker Base for aircraft that drop retardant on fires throughout Wyoming and nine other Western states. (See Facts and Figures section for details about the funding split.)

“It made sense to us for this to happen,” says CPR Director Glenn Januska, who spearheaded the project. “I didn’t know it at the time that we were cutting-edge,” he adds, referring to the formula of two federal agencies providing funding for a facility to be operated by one—in this case, the Bureau of Land Management.

The nearly $6.3 million facility that opened last June replaced a crucial, but makeshift, base for single-engine airtankers. The new fully equipped station supports both single-engine and large airtankers that need to be fueled and filled with retardant, and also allows crews to load two aircraft simultaneously.

The 5.2-acre base includes:

• a 1,600-square-foot Operations Building;
• an asphalt parking area for aircraft;
• two concrete loading pads;
• storage for extra hoses, fittings, safety equipment and backup gas pumps;
• a retention area for tanks containing fire retardant;
• a washdown pad, where retardant is rinsed off aircraft; and
• an evaporation pond, which holds rinsewater that contains retardant until the water evaporates and the retardant is collected and removed.

The Bureau of Land Management leases the new base and a pre-existing 9,000-square-foot dispatch center from the airport.

A Step Up

The differences between the old and new bases are considerable—including an increase in the maximum daily output of fully mixed retardant from 15,000 gallons to 90,000 gallons. Also, the new Operations Building replaces two separate trailers.

At the old facility, crews could only load one single-engine air tanker with retardant or fuel at a time. Now, they can load two planes simultaneously, mixing or matching single-engine and large air tankers. In addition, they can load Modular Airborne Firefighting Systems—3,000-gallon tanks that are filled with retardant and slid into C-130 Hercules and Super Hercules Js. The retardant is a mixture of water and fire-suppressing chemicals with gelling/thickening agents and red coloring that helps pilots see where they’ve dropped the crucial fire-fighting liquid.

Craig Short, fire management officer for the Bureau of Land Management’s Wyoming High Plains District, points out that the new base at CPR can handle firefighting aircraft ranging from single-engine tankers with individual maximum capacities of 800 gallons to Lockheed C-130Qs, which can each hold 4,000 gallons.

2024 Fire Season

The new capabilities at CPR help meet a pressing need. In 2009, for example, the airport’s previous base supported crews responding to 55 wildfires in Wyoming and surrounding states. During the 2024 fire season, aircraft out of CPR responded to more than 80 fires, flying more than 450 missions. Moreover, the 2024 season lasted from June 23 (the base’s very first mission) until Oct. 28. Peak activity came in September, during the LaBonte Fire, which burned 3,500 remote acres in Wyoming’s Converse County, when planes dropped up to 76,000 gallons in a single day. In recent years, the average amount of retardant used annually had been 90,000 gallons, but 2024 required 856,000 gallons of retardant—nearly 10 times more than usual.

Dropping that amount of fire retardant requires a lot of aircraft. Clark Hammond, regional aviation officer for the U.S. Forest Service in Denver, notes that the fleet operating out of CPR included, among others, BAE-146 large airtankers and RJ-85 single-engine airtankers leased from Neptune Aviation Services as well as AT-802 single-engine tankers flown by pilots from Air Tractor, and four Super Scooper planes supplied and flown by Bridger Aerospace.

A Joint Effort

The coordination that occurred to create the state-of-the-art base is a story in and of itself. In 2009, CPR started serving as the site for portable firefighting bases to help crews battle wildfires as needed. By 2020, it was permanently housing two single-engine airtankers for the Wyoming State Forestry Division.

The Bureau of Land Management also has bases for single-engine airtankers 256 miles from CPR, at Southwest Wyoming Regional Airport in Rock Springs, and at Worland Municipal Airport,156 miles from Casper. After upgrading those facilities years before, it then focused on enhancing CPR.

Originally, the plan was to upgrade the airport’s makeshift facilities into a base that could handle two single-engine airtankers simultaneously. In fact, design drawings by Ardurra Group were 95% complete when the U.S. Forest Service joined the discussions, with the idea of bringing a large airtanker base to CPR—and possibly providing funding to do so.

“We pivoted,” recalls Januska, “My hope was maybe we could build something that would work for both [the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management].” He and Jake Hlavacek, director of Operations and Maintenance at CPR, consequently asked Ardurra what it would take to make the planned single-engine air tanker base into a facility for both large and single-engine aircraft.

Project engineers made the needed changes, and the Forest Service subsequently contributed about $2 million to support building the new facility with broader support capabilities. That amount was combined with $4.28 million from the Bureau of Land Management, which included reimbursements to CPR for costs the airport incurred for design and construction and a low-interest $600,000 loan to complete the project.

Januska describes his role as administrative—”taking care of development, negotiating the project scope, reviewing plans and specifications, ensuring compliance with FAA regulations” and working with the airport board. “Building the facility itself was relatively easy,” he reflects. The challenges occurred earlier, with the sudden pivot to expand the capabilities of the new base late in the design process, and the needed loan to get all of the work awarded before the bid hold date expired.

Routine construction or not, the project required precision to satisfy the needs and specifications of both entities. “We worked with the BLM [Bureau of Land Management] and our engineering firm on the design scope. Then, you throw USFS in there with their funding, and making sure that what we’re constructing meets their requirements also, and you have a process that we’re not used to.”

More Enhancements Pending

Forging ahead, CPR is investigating what it would take to accommodate very large air tankers, such as DC-10s able to carry as much as 9,400 gallons of retardant per flight. Naturally, that would considerably boost the base’s capabilities, but the taxiway and loading pit would need to be enhanced because such aircraft are heavier, with operating weights of 430,000 pounds each.

The Operations Building is a modular structure that was transported to the airport and set permanently on a foundation.

Runway length has not been a limiting factor, since CPR has a 10,165-foot primary runway and has supported very large air tankers in the past. Each time, however, a portable retardant facility had to be brought in. “Building the infrastructure to support the very large air tankers is less costly over time and is more likely for those aircraft to position and use the CPR facilities as a base of operations,” says Januska.

Craig Short, fire management officer
for the Bureau of Land Management’s
Wyoming High Plains District, points out that the new base at CPR can handle
firefighting aircraft ranging from single-engine tankers with individual maximum capacities of 800 gallons to Lockheed C-130Qs, which can each hold 4,000 gallons.

The airport is also actively working with the Wyoming State Forestry Division on establishing a state helitack base at CPR. That facility, replacing a makeshift facility in Glenrock, WY, would house helicopters with firefighting crews and would be located adjacent to CPR’s tanker base. Januska reports that plans are complete and the goal is to have the new helitack base operable in time for the 2026 fire season.

While looking ahead, Januska, who has been director at CPR since 2006, also looks back. He remembers the airport’s role during the response to the Arapaho Fire in the Laramie Mountain Range and, closer to home, the Sheep Herder Hill Fire on Casper Mountain during 2012, which was one of the worst fire seasons in recent years. That event pointed to the need for more water pressure at the airport if CPR wanted to play a greater role in supporting aerial fire operations, he explains. After a six-year process working with regional water and state entities, a new water tower with greater capabilities was constructed “to sustainably support such operations in the future,” Januska explains.

To be sure, intensifying wildfires are driving the initiatives at CPR. But there’s something else at work, too: communities responding on a personal level in the face of growing threat. Januska recalls residents of Casper and surrounding communities bringing casseroles and more for aerial firefighting crews and airport workers during the Sheep Herder Hill Fire. Their gestures remain a touching reminder of what’s at stake for people living in the region.

Crews load one BAE-146 with fire retardant while another waits its turn.

“If something’s going to happen within the state or Natrona County, I personally want to make sure we’ve done everything that can be done to ensure that the aerial resources are here,” says Januska with resolve. “It’s in our interest to protect our property and state.”