Whenever a fire starts, firefighters on the ground decide whether to call in air support, but are typically quick to do so to make sure fires don't get out of hand.
The best case scenario is that an Air Attack plane arrives first, holding a former ground firefighter who can help call the shots and direct aircraft around the fire, essentially acting as an Air Traffic Controller from the sky.
The aircraft that start showing up typically make their drop, and check to see if they're needed again before heading to a body of water. They usually like to have at least one mile of water to scoop.
"Once we get to a water way that we're going to scoop, we need to make sure that the boats there are cleared, so we'll make a low pass over that if there's boat traffic, to try to give the boaters the opportunity to see that we need to go to work," Fire Boss Pilot Keaton Mitchell said.