Shawn Stavang, the man behind Elvis Helitak's might (American hero in Australian fires)

Herald Sun ^ | 13th February 2009 | Anne Wright

[naturalman1975]

SHAWN Stavang is the saviour in the sky for hundreds of Victorian bushfire survivors.

Flying the famous Elvis Helitak above the deadly flames, he provides hope for those desperately trying to defend their properties.

In his 16 years of fighting bushfires, the Californian has never seen devastation on a scale like this.

"On Saturday it didn't matter how many aircraft you had," he said.

"There were just too many fires. I don't know how they all got started, but they're just everywhere.

"I started working on the ground driving a fuel truck to the fires in 1992 in the US and I've never seen death like this."

Mr Stavang has been working 12-hour days dropping 9000lt water bombs.

When he's home, he's skiing in Lake Tahoe, driving a snow plough and going to drag races.

He left his favourite companion, his dog Diane, at home on the mountains of Lake Tahoe to come here to help fight Victoria's worst bushfires.

Last week he arrived in 40C heat and watched from the air as Victorians lost an unbeatable battle against nature.

He has been living on sandwiches, wolfed down in minutes as Elvis gets refuelled every two hours.

During his two-hour stints in the air, he refills Elvis' tanker about 30 times from nearby dams and ponds.

It takes less than a minute before he heads back to the fire front.

Mr Stavang repeats this over and over, until late night when he catches a few hours sleep in a motel room near Essendon Airport.

[naturalman1975]

There are six Erickson aircrane/skycrane helicopter water bombers from America operating in Australia at the moment. Elvis is, by far, the most famous, having saved 300 homes in Sydney in 2001, and a famous waterdrop that saved 14 trapped firefighters during those fires.

They have become almost an icon here - people battling fires looking above in immense gratitude as Elvis (or one of the others - but people call them all Elvis) comes overhead.

[MahatmaGandu]

I’m happy to see that California does something good in the world.

[naturalman1975]

[Rockiette]

It is so tragic, I’m glad that Salvang is able to help. Catching the people who are setting these fires should require a sentence of either death or a lifetime of hard labor. How long has this fire devastation been going on, it seems many, many weeks. God Bless the Australians, they are strong to stand up to all this tragedy.