Vincent Chase pretty much nailed it. Different missions, different capabilities, different advantages/disadvantages.
I was in Colorado last year when they had major wildfires by the Royal Gorge (outside Canon City) and (at the exact same time) the Black Forest fire, just north of Colorado Springs. The Royal Gorge fire was ~ 50 miles west, while the Black Forest fire was ~50 miles north. Air quality was not good....
The Royal Gorge fire did not lend itself to rapid reloading of water or other retardants by helo based assets - no open water nearby (trying to pick up water from the Arkansas river in the middle of the canon would have been quite hazardous), so the DC-10 was the weapon of choice. It was operating out of the Pueblo airport, and I was working in a house in the landing path. I don't know what the turn around time was, but I'm pretty confident they didn't bother with normal altitude, noise, and approach procedures.
After one particularly noisy approach, the guy that was doing the tile work for me came inside and asked me if I knew the number of rivets on the underside of a DC-10 wing, as he'd just counted them
