Norman Anderson (shown here in Arizona in 1974) said that he felt gratified “doing a community service” through aviation back then.Norman Anderson (shown here in Arizona in 1974) said that he felt gratified “doing a community service” through aviation back then.

Norman Anderson has flown for 33 years for Skybird Aviation in the Los Angeles area, now serving as its director of operations. Flying top-of-the-line airplanes, he transports business people to their meetings around the world, including recent trips to Tel Aviv, Barcelona, London, Nice, and Milan.

As much as he enjoys the work, Anderson recalls fondly the special functions he performed at the start of his career, in Page, Ariz. From 1969 to 1974, he worked for Page Aviation, which contracted with the Agriculture Department’s Forest Service and the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management to help their workers fight fires on federal land.

Most of the time, Anderson flew tourists on scenic flights over such natural wonders as the Grand Canyon, Marble Canyon, and Lake Powell. The Cessnas he piloted also picked up rafters along the Colorado River and returned them to their cars.

The BLM and FS flights usually occurred following nights of heavy thunderstorms that set off sparks in the dry woods. Anderson recalled that Utah’s Kaiparowits Plateau and Kaibab Plateau, on the Grand Canyon’s northern edge, were particularly susceptible because of their altitude and heavy pine cover. The company relied on Anderson and his fellow pilots to direct the ground-based firefighting crews to flames that otherwise would be missed until great damage had been done.

“We’d fly a grid back and forth across the entire plateau and would say [to those on the ground] that we’re over the fire, so go to that location. We’d be in contact with people in small fire trucks and tankers not much bigger than a pick-up truck,” Anderson said.

“These little fires might smolder for days before they’d burst into big fires. Who knows how many times lightning struck the ground the night before? It might have been hundreds. It might be hard for trucks to see the smoldering—like a small wisp, like a backyard barbecue. They’d be in the forest, but couldn’t see the fire. We’d see it from the air.”

After dousing the smoldering trees, Anderson added, the firefighters “shoveled up” the area and moved on to the next forest fires needing attention, at the pilots’ direction.

In those years, Anderson also was dispatched for medical emergencies. He remembers picking up a construction worker whose legs were crushed by the blade of an earth-mover. After the man was treated in Page, Anderson flew him and a nurse to Phoenix for specialized treatment.

Anderson also assisted a tourist on a river trip whose hand was severed when he walked into another airplane’s propeller. “They saved his hand,” Anderson said. “He called me a few years later to thank me. I saw his hand. It worked. I couldn’t believe it.” Another accident victim he transported from Lake Powell had suffered serrated skin when thrown into the water making a sharp turn and scrambling unsuccessfully to avoid his boat’s propeller.

More often, Anderson recalled, he flew people with burns they’d incurred while helming their boats and checking, dangerously, on their choked engines. Some were burned everywhere above the waist, with first-, second- or third-degree burns. He flew them from Bullfrog Airport or Halls Crossing Airport near the lake to burn centers in Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City.

“I felt like I was doing a community service, really doing something rather than entertaining some tourists,” Anderson said of assisting medical and firefighting professionals. “I look back on it as a fond memory.”

By: Hillel Kuttler