“It takes kind of a little bit of a psycho,” R.K. Smithley said.
Capt. R.K. Smithley pauses as he searches for the appropriate word. He’s been asked to describe what it’s like flying a DC-10 just a few hundred feet above the ground, at 170 mph and carrying an 85,000-pound load, all while dealing with heavy winds, hilly terrain, other aircraft in the area and thick smoke billowing from the wildfires he’s helping to combat.
What it takes is a special type of person, possessing specific qualifications. Smithley meets that standard.
“Some guys adapt to this, some don’t,” Smithley, father of NASCAR Xfinity Series driver Garrett Smithley, told The Athletic on Monday. “It takes kind of a little bit of a psycho, for lack of a better word, to adapt and excel. You’ve got to be able to excel at this and be able to put retardant on the ground in very challenging conditions, as we’ve had out here in California.
“We’re doing all this in a 400,000-pound airplane, alongside a mountain doing 10 degrees, nose-down pitch, which the airlines classified as an emergency descent — that’s what we do routinely here.”
Currently working in Southern California, Smithley is flying upward of six missions a day to drop fire retardant to help stop the flames that have spread across a region ravaged by wildfires. In many ways, this is old hat to the 65-year-old who’s been a pilot since 1983 and for the past 11 years has flown an air tanker into various hot spots around the country. In 2024 alone, he flew missions over nearly a dozen states.
But this mission is different. The multiple fires that began last week across the Los Angeles area are unique in scope. Two of the blazes, the Palisades and Eaton fires, represent two of the deadliest and most destructive in California history, spanning a combined 38,000 acres, according to Cal Fire. Twenty-four people have been killed, thousands of homes destroyed and more than 100,000 residents have had to evacuate.
View this post on Instagram
High winds compounded the difficulty of containing the fires, with gusts reaching 100 mph. This initially grounded 10 Tanker, the New Mexico-based private aerial firefighting company Smithley works for that dispatches pilots to hot spots during outbreaks, but since taking to the air Friday, Smithley and his team have made numerous runs to drop gallons of fire retardant.
It’s a highly coordinated effort featuring a fleet of tanker planes, scooper planes — those that swoop down and collect from large bodies of water — and helicopters, which also carry and drop water. The DC-10 Smithley pilots is a former commercial airliner that’s been rebuilt so it can house three large tanks. Routes and drop zones are meticulously planned. Everything is synchronized down to the smallest detail. For example, the fire retardant is specifically colored reddish-pink so it’s easily discernible to those in the air and on the ground.
“The other day in this fire in the Palisades, we showed up late in the day — that’s the day we did six flights — and we were No. 5 to drop on the fire,” Smithley said. “So we get in position to either hold and not be a conflict to (other air tankers), or we get into a big left holding pattern. And I find it humorous we’re doing left turns because in NASCAR, it’s always left turns. So we’re all making left turns around the fire, watching each other to keep out of each other’s way, staying in drill so we can see the drops.”
Smithley’s use of NASCAR vernacular to describe the intricacies of his job is natural as it’s a sport he’s long loved and passed on to Garrett, 32, who’s made a combined 266 starts at NASCAR’s national level, including 76 in the Cup Series. Garrett will drive the No. 14 Xfinity car for SS-Green Light Racing full time in 2025.
How Garrett is doing on the track is often a topic of conversation within 10 Tanker, as nearly the entirety of the NASCAR schedule overlaps with the team’s “fire season,” from March to early November. During downtime, the team will often watch Garrett’s races to help pass the hours. And racing is never far from R.K.’s mind, even texting Garrett this week an aerial photo of California Speedway he took during one of his flights.
“This thing is a roller coaster, like pre-race before a NASCAR race,” Smithley said. “During pre-race, Garrett is walking around, signing autographs, then when it’s time to go race, the heart rate starts coming up. We’re the same deal — until the phone rings and they say you’re going to the Palisades fire. Then you load the fire retardant, and you go.”
That Smithley is fighting fires doesn’t surprise anyone who knew him growing up in Pennsylvania. He worked as a volunteer firefighter for 20 years, following in the footsteps of his grandfather and his father. But becoming a third-generation firefighter while flying a plane, well, that was unexpected.
Shortly after graduating high school, he decided he wanted to be a pilot and attended Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., just across the street from Daytona International Speedway, site of NASCAR’s signature race, the Daytona 500. He flew various aircraft for several years, including transporting military personnel around the globe, before eventually transitioning to his current job.
It’s a career path Smithley never envisioned, though one he thoroughly enjoys even if it can be demanding. He is based in Chuckey, Tenn., about 50 minutes from Bristol Motor Speedway, and when a wildfire breaks out that necessitates air support, he is dispatched. And often with little notice.
When the fires in and around Los Angeles erupted early last week, he knew he’d likely be heading to Southern California. His intuition proved correct, soon receiving notice that he was needed out West.
“During pre-race, Garrett is … signing autographs, then when it’s time to go race, the heart rate starts coming up,” R.K. Smithley says. “We’re the same deal.” (Courtesy of R.K. Smithley)
“When I got here a few days ago, I hadn’t flown since November, so I got to knock off the rust in some of the busiest airspace in the country, on a fire that’s killed 20-plus people and burned 5,000 structures,” Smithley said. “Once you knock off that rust, it’s better. But the first flight was pretty tense. The second flight is not quite as tense.
“The third flight, we’re getting the feel for the route we’re in, where we’re operating on fire, where the helicopters are. We’re getting the situational awareness, just like Garrett does at various tracks; there’s an equation between me and him, as far as that goes.”
This marks the first time Smithley has been called to a fire in January, a point driven home when, during his first flight, Smithley saw the extreme ruination the fires left behind.
“We came into these catastrophic fires at Pacific Palisades and Altadena to drop, and suddenly we came over the top of hundreds of burned houses and cars, and all that’s left of those neighborhoods are foundations and ash,” Smithley said. “It slaps you in the face thinking about the lives lost, thousands who will never be the same, lost mostly everything they own and will be likely scarred for life. That’s difficult to experience for sure, can be pretty emotional.
“But when it’s our turn to come into the fire traffic area, we have to shut that off and focus solely on the task at hand, thread those needles and put the fire retardant down exactly where the firefighters on the ground need it. Back at the hotel that night watching the devastation on the news is very tough to see, very tough.”
“It slaps you in the face thinking about the lives lost, thousands who will never be the same, lost mostly everything they own,” R.K. Smithley says of the fires. (Courtesy of R.K. Smithley)
(Top photo of a 10 Tanker plane dropping fire retardant on the Palisades fire in Los Angeles on Friday: Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu via Getty Images)
