Photo by Rob Varela

Air National Guard Staff Sgt. Noah Cooper steadies the ladder as Master Sgt. Mitch Lefler checks the intake of a C-130 turbine Tuesday at Point Mugu.

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Six military cargo aircraft headed south for San Diego County on Wednesday to help squelch fires raging near Camp Pendleton, officials said.

The C-130s departed the Channel Islands Air National Guard 146th Airlift Wing around 4 p.m., Air National Guard Lt. Col. George Cardwell said.

The aircraft contain the U.S. Forest Service's Modular Airborne FireFighting System. MAFFS sit inside the cargo bay and carry 2,500 gallons of fire retardant, which covers an area about 100 feet wide and a quarter-mile long. The planes fire the retardant out the back door from about 150 feet off the ground.

Officials at a regional branch of the National Interagency Fire Center in Riverside decide where to send air tankers, said Joe Pasinato, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman in the agency's Goleta office.

Threats to life and structures are critical factors in choosing where to send air support, Pasinato said.

About 18 fires are burning in Southern California. As of 6 a.m. Wednesday, the Ranch fire, which started north of Lake Castaic, had burned 51,337 acres and was 45 percent contained. The fire is no longer considered a threat to Fillmore or Piru, and all evacuation warnings have been lifted, according to the Ventura County Fire Department's Web site.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger requested the C-130s from the Department of Defense on Monday. The six aircraft arrived Tuesday from Air National Guard bases in Colorado Springs, Colo.; Cheyenne, Wyo.; and Charlotte, N.C. Two MAFFS are also housed at the Channel Islands guard base, but they are being refurbished.

Two of the six planes can dump retardant twice in one flight. The other four can make only one dump before reloading.

All the planes will operate out of the 146th Airlift Wing, which shares a runway with Naval Base Ventura County at Point Mugu.

It's unclear how many trips each plane will make today, Cardwell said. The aircraft cannot operate at night.

Although the C-130s arrived Tuesday, they could not operate until Wednesday because Forest Service officials had to construct a facility to load retardant first, Cardwell said. Officials had until 1 p.m. Wednesday to ready the facility.

The retardant is a combination of chemical powder and water that must be mixed shortly before the aircraft depart, Cardwell said.

Salts in the chemical squelch oxygen, starving the fire. A thickener in the chemical prolongs the effect. Mixing the retardant to a specific viscosity, or thickness, is critical to its success.