Source: Radio New Zealand
Henry Phelps at the helm Supplied
Kiwi pilot Henry Phelps has gone from wilderness flying in New Zealand to helping combat Australia’s devastating bushfires.
Working with his brother to control the fires from the air has been an “amazing” experience, he told Country Life.
When not flying for Sounds Air, Phelps has been commuting to Melbourne for the past few months to pilot a small fixed-wing plane as part of an aerial surveillance team, helping to track the bushfires and relay information about their path.
A major heatwave across Australia’s southeast stoked the fatal fires this summer, forcing hundreds of rural residents to evacuate and burning more than 400,000 hectares in Victoria alone.
Phelps joined his brother Edward, already working in Melbourne as a helicopter pilot, for the bushfire season in September last year.
Henry Phelps with his brother Edward. They can sometimes be flying on the same mission mapping bushfires, Ed in a chopper and Henry piloting a fixed wing Supplied
The brothers piloted their craft over the fires while an operator in the rear took images using specialised photographic equipment “gathering real time intelligence and sending that to the ground crews in terms of mapping the fires and getting a good grasp of the size of them, the hot spots and where best to attack from the ground”, Phelps said.
In Victoria the fires have laid waste to swathes of farmland, killing 45,000 farm animals at last count. Two farmers were killed in Western Australia trying to fight the fires there.
“Because we’re at such a high altitude, it’s really hard to get a proper grasp of the sheer scale of it.
“But as soon as that fire grows, you can see the smoke obviously lifting up into the atmosphere, and the smoke spreading, you know, for miles, hundreds and hundreds of kilometres.”
The 26-year-old, who has been flying a Pilatus PC-12 – a single-engined turboprop – in the fire zones, says it has been a rewarding job knowing the data he helped collect, assisted people on the ground.
“It’s pretty incredible to see the maps come to life, especially once you’ve flown the routes.
“This fire may, because of the westerly, may be moving more so to the east and so you see the outlines grow and for us as fire scanners to see it in real time, then you know, once you’ve finished and see it on the emergency app, it gives you a pretty rewarding sense of this is actually pretty, pretty cool.”
ABC News / Port Fairy Urban Fire Brigade
At times, he was aerial scanning the same fire as his brother, who has also been doing aerial intelligence work but at a much lower altitude.
“There was one specific time where we were both on the same fire in the middle of Victoria, and it was just us two on it and talking together and that was pretty special for me.”
Phelps started his commercial pilot career flying tourists over Fiordland, and he said he was used to “tricky” flying.
“The weather changes in a split second, so that is definitely a big part of the challenge, and also with the high terrain, just being very aware of having exit strategies and knowing what you can and can’t do and knowing what the aircraft capability is as well.”
One of Henry Phelps first flying roles was flying tourists to Milford Sound Supplied
The son of cropping farmers, he got interested in flying when helicopters came to spray the crops.
“I spent a lot of time in those Hughes 500s as a kid, and I just really loved it.”
- Learn more about aerial fire mapping technology used in Australia here.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
