For years, Ray Taglio has been the eyes in the sky for Mendocino County firefighters, directing countless precise attacks on wildfires of all sizes. But on Sunday, he took his last flight as Battalion Aviation Chief of the Ukiah Air Attack Base.
Of course, he’s not technically retired yet and neither is fire season, but still it’s very unlikely he will be flying in an OV-10 airplane as the Air Tactical Group Supervisor again.
“We could bring the planes back — the contract for the fixed-wings to be at the airport doesn’t end until Oct. 31, so we could decide to bring them back, but given the weather, I doubt it,” said Taglio, explaining that since the Ukiah Municipal Airport is now closed for about a month for runway work, staff at the base decided to give him the traditional “water curtain” sendoff a bit early.
“I don’t officially retire until Nov. 20,” said Taglio, speaking earlier this week with radio traffic crackling in the background as he filled in for a colleague in Sonoma County, which is where he began his firefighting career 27 years ago.
After growing up in Ukiah, Taglio started as a seasonal firefighter with Cal Fire in 1992 in Petaluma, “back when Sonoma County was its own unit, before it merged with Lake and Napa as part of the Somoma-Lake-Napa Unit.,” he said.
In 1995, Taglio then joined the Mendocino Unit as a helitack firefighter, meaning he would be part of a crew dropped off by a helicopter near a fire to fight the flames “with no hoses, no fire engines, just hand tools.” And because that “gave you a lot of experience” in fire-fighting tactics, Taglio said being on a helitack crew was a sought-after position.
After promoting to captain in 2001 while back in Sonoma County, Taglio returned to the Mendocino Unit in 2009 and began working at the Ukiah Air Attack Base, where for the past several years he has been conducting firefighting operations from the air — carefully planning each attack while watching the smoke and flames from 2,500-foot up as a passenger in the OV-10.
On Tuesday he had gone full circle, working near Petaluma again and preparing to train others in the art of fighting a fire in the air.
“That’s what I really love,training,” he said, explaining that after retiring he hopes to come back as an instructor, training future Air Attack chiefs.
And what does it take to be good at his job?
“Multi-tasking, definitely multi-tasking: You are listening to six different radios and have six voices in your head,” he said, adding that a good chief not only needs to make quick decisions, but make everyone else on the radio believe in those decisions.
“We call it ‘command presence,’” he said. “If you don’t have it, people won’t listen to you, especially tanker pilots. They can tell right away if you aren’t sure.”
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