Elvis water bombing Narre Warren North

[cinetico5]

I took some still's of this helo before taking the vid. From the still's you can clearly see the 'Elvis' name on the front.

Much respect to the guys fighting these fires, there is clearly an element of risk flying these machines.

[muddydave01]

This video is tops. Awesome awesome machine.

So many small minds and big mouths here. I've fought fires in more places than I care to remember and every single one scared me in some little way. Every single one taught me something new and gave me added respect for most of the people fighting them. I say most because every now and then you'd meet some body with a huge head who was trying to put the fire out by wanking over it and couldn't accept they had fires elsewhere.

[Jakzv]

I was 100M from that thank god the fire did not go over the hill..

[kossss1000]

this helicopter is very good..!!!

[kiwiguy211264]

has the australian govt bought any of these ....think it would be a good idea dont you think??

[xdanchelseax]

they were flying over south australia today :)

[sunsetreptiles]

it takes 45 secs for one of these guys to fell up with water.

[portantwas]

Gee that's a quick fill up and then dumping the water. Lucky the lake was there.

[BatBastardson]

Elvis.

[kbert63]

Now this is also an S64F model.

[nattahhwantslollies]

Thank god for the CFA and Elvis.

I lived just across the road from there.

[bradswarrencom]

This actually is the "Elvis", hard to read the name on the nose in this videow though. Elvis can most easily be distinguished from the "others" by observing the dual wheel main landing gear. Elvis is an F model as opposed to an E. There were 2 F models in Australia for 2009 season.

[LordEthan2]

Ahhh 778, that one isnt elvis thats one of the U.S ones that got lended, great heli though, great asset to the protection of homes/lives

[J3sst44]

One of the ones lent by the US*

And Elvis was borrowed from the US anyway. It's a global firefighting tool, not just Australia, although it does show up over here every fire season.

[waveridin]

wow!

[351302v8]

god bless you elvis....TCB

[Barsopen1970]

though , does make one wonder why they did'nt build an even bigger one... for the size of the huge chopper, the tank kind of looks small for a craft the big.

skimming the water surface like that for so long would be scary though.

i know it's relatively a seasonal thing ...but OZ government really should have 2 of these suckers.

[bigfirie]

Don't forget, that little tank holds just over 9 tonnes of water. That's a lot of weight to lift and the equivalent of 3 truck loads.

We currently have 5 sky cranes operating in Australia for our bushfire season, and three of those were in Victoria on Black Saturday. Normally over fire season we have 2 in Victoria, 2 in NSW and 1 in SA, but they do get moved around as the threat profiles change.

[PHDrocker]

actually theres 6

2 in Melb, 1 in Adel, 3 in Syd.

we (Victoria) received 2 from Sydney to assist.

[donttouchstevesbeer]

from its nose to tail its as long as a semi trailer and truck. choppers dont get any bigger!

[belthizor]

any further down and Elvis would have been in the drink. Great to see that we have such effective fire-fighting equipment, a shame they couldn't do much to save Marysville and Kinglake

[bigfirie]

Yeah. The sad part is that there is nothing in the world that could have stopped those fire fronts. There was too much wind to get any of the skycranes in there and the fires were so intense that it wouldn't have made any difference to the outcome. :(

[belthizor]

True, I hear that America and Canada are lending us some fire fighters, the poor bastards won't know what hit 'em

[tankedline]

lol exactly.....

[hawker800FO]

@belthizor BC fires are much harder to battle than any aussie fire ive had cousins, uncles and friends in BC mountain fires

[belthizor]

@hawker800FO umm... BC Fires? I don't know what that means, sorry

[hawker800FO]

@belthizor british columbia, mountains, and steep terrain

[belthizor]

@hawker800FO ah ok. Well Australia has some severe extreme weather patterns that makes Aussie Bushfires among the worst in the world

[Spanrz]

Looked like he sucked a great deal of mud.

Click on my name for some of the Narre South Fire Vids.

[Bobman84]

Great video mate.

That's a fantastic piece of machinery.