These fires were in the mountains and from my understanding no structures were threatened but the fear is always of it growing and spreading to nearby towns.
Rost, There are logging roads to access for ground attack but a lot of the suppression efforts center around air attack. Fixed and rotary wing assets allow for the application of a lot of water on the problem areas.
Fire is great for healthy forests but can be extremely destructive in dense and overgrown, liberally managed stands.
The piss poor management can sterilize a forest when fire should have been a GOOD thing... it can just flat kill it off. Fuel loads to big and so on.
I've never been on a big fire where we had lots of aerial. We were on a 50 acre one once where by pure luck there was a big tanker, like a 135 or such, Im' not good with planes and it did kill the fire in place, I was impressed with those loads of retardant and the tiny lead plane leading the tanker into place.
But mostly here with have a rotary wing or two. They are good for saving structures some, and spot fire type issues, but we still end up having to doze a line or wait for it to get to a fightable defendable space.
