the operation has been carefully crafted by chief brian renner, whose paired his passion for flying withing fires to create the largest scale aerial exercise at night that cal fire has conducted today. helicopter background, you know, just feel that the job that i have and role that we play is helicopter operations really makes a difference and help support the folks on the ground. cal fire acquired a fleet of helicopters, including chinook helicopters, that will be deployed this summer to keep firefights going under the moonlight we're just at the start of fire season, but the agency says they've already seen over 40,000 acres burned this year. the winds start to subside. the temperatures go down, the humidity goes up, and when the ground firefighters are still actively engaged in the fire, and they have water dropping helicopters were there to help support them and their structure, defense and perimeter control when the sun goes down at a cal fire base, just north of sacramento. that's when these crews deploy. they use lights on hillsides as mark fire perimeters, renner says, when a re