N172AC —

It's a Sikorsky S-64F Skycrane, good photo of it too.

A very versatile aircraft, can be fitted out for heavy duty lifting, also as in this case for aerial water suction into their onboard tank/s via the white suction hose which would hang down a few more meters during flight, so the Heli just hovers over the lake dipping the suction hose to such in the huge quantity of water in a few seconds, fly a sortie to the location of say a forest fire & return & do repetitive drops thus dowsing the fire. The other option is a hanging water bucket below which it dunks & fils up at lakes or rivers & air drops it over the fire zone. The whole idea being to save time for landing & take off.

I got a couple of showers from this one in N Texas that year. They are impressive to watch.

Nice photo of a familiar Erikson Air Crane rotary bird we have come over to us in Australia every summer for bush fire fighting use. They do a fantastic job, and are all uniquely named too. :)