Due to steep terrain that caused difficulties of extinguishing fire from the ground and an unfavorable wind direction that could make the fire disaster bigger, the Forestry Bureau requested NASC’s support to extinguish the fire in the Jhuoshuei River Forest Working Circle No. 38.
The 3rd team of the 2nd NASC battalion stationed in Taichung CCK received a notification from the NASC Duty Command Center at 19:57 yesterday (the 3rd) to dispatch a Helicopter UH-1H this morning (the 4th) to implement the forest fire extinguishing mission. After took off at 06:40, the helicopter number NA-516 arrived in the target zone at 07:15 and firstly conducted an aerial survey. Then the flight crew and SSRT members completed the installation of water storage bags and fetched water to implement the drowning work. On the other hand, helicopter number NA-510 took off at 08:02 and arrived in the target zone at 08:25 to join the fire extinguishing work. The scene of the fire was about 0.5 hectare and located in steep terrain. As it was very windy, the helicopter had to implement the fire extinguishing work in a very difficult environment. At 11:25, the fire was eventually under control and the ground personnel from Forestry Bureau continued the rest work. On this day, the NASC helicopters totally implemented the mission 9 times, drowned 31 times of water, and transported 24.8 tons of water to extinguish the fire.