“The fire was moving at 20-25 mph; the fire traveled a mile and a half in 20 minutes to jump into ‘our’ property. With the pasture field grass that we have out here, that’s how fast it can move. The fire was eating up ground, all we can do was carrel it and defend it from jumping on county land, basically keep it on Army land.”– Steven Coloma, Pōhakuloa Training Area (PTA) Fire and Emergency Services

From July 30th to August 4th, 2021, the Waimea wildfire grew to become the largest in Hawaii’s modern history.  Hawaii’s Army National Guard, and the U.S. Army’s 25th Combat Aviation Brigade (CAB), joined the fight.

25th CAB used their CH-47 and HH-60 helicopters:“…the priority was some threatened and endangered species that reside on PTA. Once we got that initial assessment from the PTA firefighters, we started hitting the areas around the threatened and endangered species. That was PTA garrison commander’s number one priority—fire management on federal land, and ensure we saved the threatened and endangered species.”-Major Lee Jones, 3rd Battalion, 25th Aviation Regiment

Armed with Bambi buckets, the Chinook and Black Hawk ‘copters made 268 drops on the fire, more than 169-thousand gallons of water.  The Waimea wildfire burned at least 40-thousand acres (16187 hectares).

Fire report as of 01AUG2021:

Fire report as of 03AUG2021:

Fire report as of 14AUG2021:

U.S. Wildfires 2021: MINNESOTA MILITIA RESPONDS!