I Haven't Been Myself

They use water in California, where appropriate. As you probably know, they have huge rigs they use to pick up tons of water from the ocean, fly it over a blaze, and dump it right on. Why they don't use them more often, I don't know... probably really expensive

It is; costs thousands here. When there's a really big fire here a lot of the departments/agencies combine their forces and resources to be able to get some bigger guns sent in, (metaphorically speaking).

We're in the dead center of Alaska; ocean is a few hundred miles away in three directions, and non existent in the fourth direction; we got some big lakes and ponds though; some of them can be a little tricky to get water from with a chopper though because they're all public and people are usually swimming; it's kinda like a game of darts but with a giant, orange bucket and a little piece of pond/lake as the dart board haha. And that's if we can even afford it. And we can usually just forget about being able to drive the engines to every fire; particularly the ones way out in the middle of nowhere where the only possible entrance points are by marching, flying, or boating. If we have to we can set up miles and miles and miles of hose lays though if we have enough valve connectors and fork attachments, tedious work though because shit happens in the forest that ends up messing up the water flow; little tree shifts and kinks a hose a mile and a half away, or a wild animal, rocks and roots puncturing the hose. Hate having to hike back and forth for miles looking for a little malfunction somewhere and keeping my ears perked for hissing. Drives ya nuts after a few weeks lol.