The head of the United Aerial Firefighters Association, which has deployed about 200 pilots to Southern California to fight massive ongoing wildfires, told Fox News Digital that the scope of the fires is “totally demoralizing” and shaping up to be some of the worst in the nation’s history. 

“What we are seeing, especially in the United States and worldwide, is there is no longer a fire season – it is fire year-round,” Paul Petersen said on Wednesday. “[This] could end up being one of the deadliest and most climate-costliest fires in U.S. history.”

Aerial firefighters with the association are limited to eight-hour shifts in the air, like airline pilots. However, Petersen said, they are on 24-hour shifts. At night, he said, pilots are outfitted with night vision goggles. From the air, they communicate the position of the flames to firefighters on the ground and spray water or retardant substances from above.

Among the aircraft supplied by the association are helicopters, like Blackhawks and ACH 47 Chinooks, and air tankers, like Grumman S-2T and Lockheed C-130H planes, carrying thousands of gallons of water. They also supply “scooper” planes, which “scoop water from oceans, lakes and reservoirs which can be dropped as regular water or be mixed with a foam retardant,” according to Cal Fire. 

“There is a huge need to look at local, state and federal levels to how do we really start to combat when fire and suppression is a big part of it,” he continued. “You got to fight. You have to fight the fire you have. But there also has to be fuel treatments, logging, grazing, green stripping. There also has to be incentives from insurance companies for fire-adapted communities. All three of those have to work and in one fell swoop in order to do that.”

“It takes a tragedy for people to really wake up to this,” Petersen said. “And firefighters have been talking about this for 25 years, these problems that have been going on.”

Two men were charged with felony arson in Los Angeles this week as authorities combat firebugs and looters amid the chaos. Petersen said it was extremely unlikely that the fires were started naturally via lightning or spontaneous combustion.

A helicopter makes a drop as smoke billows from the Palisades Fire in the Encino neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, U.S. January 11, 2025.  (REUTERS/Daniel Dreifuss     )

“I can tell you probably with 99% surety that it wasn’t lightning and there really wasn’t any natural start to that… [With] lightning, typically you’ll get weather or you get high clouds coming in with cumulonimbus. Cumulonimbus doesn’t form with high winds [like the] Santa Ana winds… Lightning is about the number one cause,” he said. 

“So whether it is arson or whether it is carelessness from citizens or whether it is utility companies [it is likely a] human-caused fire… The wind is a natural event, the fire is natural, but the cause of that fire is not natural,” he said.