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and you also have convers. some of them are as much as 40 years old, and they are equipped with mobile fire fighting systems and then they are used by contractors who work with the federal government and send them out to different fires. they move from place to place. also one very large air tanker, essentially a d.c.-10 that s equipped to fight fires and one of the criticisms you hear is even though this can drop more fire retardant, it s harder for them to get into smaller placs,s get really at the causes of the fire and get them early on. you have folks advocating the use of smaller planes. thanks so much. we re expecting a live news conference this afternoon on the c-130s. we ll continue to follow the story for you throughout the day. let s head over to colorado now. that s one of the 12 western states battling wildfires this hour. the air force had activated its entire fleet of c-130s to help fight the fires across the west. martin savage is there in colorado spr ....
while the air force investigates the deadly crash of an eighth plane. one of these based in charlotte, north carolina. we expect to learn more in a news conference this afternoon. we know that four of the six crew members were killed, including this man, lieutenant colonel mike mckiel who spoke to one of our affiliates on saturday. lizzie o leary with the latest out of washington. what s the latest? reporter: latest is that they are investigating the cause of this crash while the other c-130s are grounded, grounded by the air force right now, and that essentially really diminishes the ability of the forest service to fight a lot of wildfires. the way the service does this is they use a number of different planes, but some of the big guns, as you said it, are the c-130s that are on loan from the air force as part of this fire fighting fleet. this is not the first time a c-130 has crashed, a relatively horrific crash in 2003 when essentially a c-130s wings folded up war ....