That's how we rock + roll in Canada

Pretty cool application of aerial fire suppression. There was a famous story here in the south Western USA of a tanker pilot trying to save his favorite bar that had caught fire with a similar stunt.

Apparently he put out the fire but the force of the load collapsed the building. (I've never been able to verify the story but have heard it form several different old timers.) True or not I like it!

Hi Surestrike
I don't know about the bar fire but it is quite possible.I had a fire where a barn had caught fire then started a forest fire,I put out the forest fire then bombed the barn and flattened it.A load of water or mud has a lot of force,jack pines we would knock them flat ripped out by the roots,spruce would bend and come back up,poplars would have the tops broken right off.Man I loved it,best job I ever had.
Bill

Bill,
Who did you fly tankers for? What did you fly?

I never flew tankers but was a smoke jumper pilot for several years.

Hi all
I flew PBYs in Canada based in Manatoba but fought fires from Alberta to Ontario.I made 5,170 bomb runs(42,960,000 pounds of water and retardant)like I said best job I ever had.
Bill

Bill, congratulations on a great career. I can't imagine how satisfying it must have been.

I witnessed a very similar incident near Pine Point, NWT, in about 1970 or '71 when I was still a young Cat operator. We had about 30 Cats fighting a fire, along with the usual assortment (in those days) of Bell 204/205s, S-58s and a handful of Cansos (PBYs to you Yanks).

One of the D8s caught fire, which wasn't unusual, and the operator was on his knees on the track trying to put it out. I was rattling toward him to give him a hand, when I saw a Canso hunkering down over the fire guard headed toward us. I cranked into the bush, as I quickly figured out what was about to happen. The poor D8 operator heard the approaching racket as well, and just looked up over the hood in time to catch a load of water square in the face.
It knocked him ass over apple cart off the track, but other than a good drenching, a few bruises and perpetual ribbing for the rest of the summer he was alright.

I have some good memories of that fire; one evening I ended up by myself with an old D7 on a long stretch of fire in scrubby little jack pine a couple of miles from the shore of Great Slave Lake. A Canso driver noticed me and started dumping just ahead of me. It was a short haul for him off the lake, and with six or eight loads from him we knocked down a quite a stretch of fire that evening. So if you're the Canso driver who did that, I still owe you a beer...