captain charlie barringer plans a plan of attack. but he receives some alarming news. >> at that point my tail man went up to the hydrant. and he says, cap, i got no water. now it dawned on me that this explosion or this event blew out all the water mains in that area. that whole grid pretty much is out. >> airplanes and helicopters must now hold the line. they release water and flame retardants to stop the fire in its tracks. >> the helicopter started dropping in our neighborhood. and due to the time of day being we still had daylight, we still had a couple hours of daylight left, we were able to get air support. and that was just a tremendous amount of help initially until we got our hose lines and our supply lines hooked up to our engines to stop the fire. >> as i turned and looked over my shoulder, here was the cavalry coming to help out. >> the air support now allows firefighters to change their plan of attack. >> our concern wasn't so much the initial ground zero area where the source of the fire was coming from. at this point