Posted on 05/10/2004 11:14:43 PM PDT by Stoat
WASHINGTON (AP) - Just as the 2004 wildfire season is opening, the government on Monday grounded an aging fleet of 33 former military tankers that had been among the biggest weapons in its arsenal for fighting the blazes.
The Forest Service and the Interior Department terminated contracts with private companies for use of the planes after the National Transportation Safety Board determined their airworthiness could be not assured. Three such planes crashed between 1994 and 2002, killing seven crew members.
Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth said that, in the wake of the NTSB report, continuing to use the tankers posed ``an unacceptable risk'' to aviators, ground firefighters and communities near the blazes.
The fixed-wing planes, some of them as old as 60 years, had been used primarily in initial attacks on fires and protecting buildings when fires were moving toward urban areas, said Dan Jiron, a spokesman for the Forest Service.
He said the government still has the use of 491 other aircraft, including smaller fixed-wing planes and helicopters. ``It's serious, but we will be able to do our job,'' Jiron said.
The tankers were each capable of dumping from 1,700 to 2,500 gallons of water a minute.
The Forest Service grounded the fleet of tankers it had under contract after two crashes in 2002.
The planes were reactivated after a new inspection program was developed at the Energy Department's Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M., but the NTSB said in its report last month that maintenance and inspection programs were still inadequate.
``It was apparent that no effective mechanism currently exists to ensure the continuing airworthinesss of these firefighting aircraft,'' the report said.
Complete information on the stresses that the planes endured in firefighting was not available, the report said. Nor was there complete information on maintenance and inspection dating back to the planes' use in the military.
Investigators who reviewed the crashes in California and Colorado in 2002 said the aircrafts' wings could not take the strain. In the California crash involving a C-130A, the wings snapped off and the fuselage plunged to the ground, killing three people on board.
Planes from the now-grounded fleet probably were used to fight a current fire in California, Jiron said. ``We always use what fleet we have available to use,'' he said.
However, the planes were not used on Monday, he said.
Fires also are burning in Montana, Arizona and Minnesota. They are fueled by drought, which has been worsening in many areas in the West, drying pasturelands and leaving forests parched. The National Drought Mitigation Center's Drought Monitor now classifies the West as being in a state of exceptional drought, worse than its initial classification of abnormally dry.
The government will have to shift firefighting tactics with the loss of the 33 planes, Jiron said.
Firefighters will target blazes with helicopters and cropduster-type fixed-wing aircraft, Jiron said. These aircraft can be more accurate than the big planes when they drop their payloads, and they can resupply with water closer to the fire, he said.
The government also can activate eight military C130s equipped to carry water, he said.
``This is a loss, but it is not something we can't address now that the curtain is raising on fire season,'' Jiron said.
To the government, the loss of planes is not an insurmountable problem. Firefighters still should be able to do their inherently dangerous job ``with or without air support,'' it said.
But one aviation officer in the Forest Service, Bill Pierce, called the grounding of the 33 tankers ``a major loss'' that could raise the risks involved with firefighting.
``It's a real hazardous situation, not having the tankers,'' said Pierce of the Humboldt-Toiyabe Forest Service office in Reno, Nev.
Thanks for fixing the link guys. I find this whole situation deplorable. The USFS bureacrats have grounded the main tool that is used for fighting the large fires....what will it take to get congressional review of this agency? Another 1910 inferno where 3 million acres goes up in two days?
As a former USFS firefighter, I know what kind of people currently run this outfit. For them to take this action without a backup plan is incompetant at the least, and potentially criminal in the end.
Be sure to contact your friends in the DenverChannel7
broadcast area alerting them to tonight's IL-76 waterbomber
television premiere from 17-time Emmy Award winner
and investigative reporter, Tony Kovaleski.
From DenverChannel website:
Friday at 10:15 p.m.: For years, the Forest Service
has ignored a new, possibly far more effective method
in fighting wildfires. Why are the more powerful air tankers
not being used?
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/denvers7/214197/detail.html
Any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers;
JohnA
Essentially all the piñons in Northern New Mexico are now dead standing firewood. I'm not sure the dead trees are a greater hazard than the living in that they contain less oil. The dreaded Bark Beetle wiped out hundreds of square miles of trees this last two years.
I had to remove 13 from around the house. The County and FEMA suggested that I do so (but they paid for the removal.)
Without tankers we could lose whole towns, as you know well.
Red
5. Willful endangerment of life of humans for any and all members of ANY enviro group, targeting the leaders first, and working your way down.
Hello JohnA,
Thanks very much for your great posts, and even more so for the great work that you and your company do. I wish that the USFS would develop an interest in achieving even a passing glance in the direction of sanity and coherence in terms of their wildfire fighting approach, but that appears to be far too much to ask. I suspect it will take another bad fire season with thousands of homes lost and hundreds dead before the public will really put some serious pressure on the USFS for real change.
I'm glad to hear that Rep. Rohrahacher and Rep. Weldon are still fighting the good fight. My apologies if I spoke presumptuously....it was a reflection of my overall disheartened attitude over this whole situation and of the sense of foreboding I feel regarding the upcoming fire season this year. I hope that they will be able to help set things right.
Re the TV broadcast, I'm wondering if there's any way that you can host a video clip of that TV event at your site, perhaps as an MPEG or AVI file that people can download? I don't live anywhere near Colorado and it looks like the only option that the TV station provides is for people to purchase a thirty dollar videotape from them.
I'm sure that you would have many people eager to see that footage all over the world, especially in light of the recent retirement of the bulk of the USFS firefighting fleet.
Thanks again for contributing your posts and I hope that you will continue to keep us updated :-)
Believe me, if we had this clip, we would post it
to the website. We don't expect to have it (format
unknown) until Monday. I expect we will be seeing
more from ABC on this matter. ABC left no trace of
the story behind at DenverChannel; not even a writeup.
Bear in mind that the Russians were in Colorado recently
on one of 100 NATO-Russia exercises scheduled for
this year, 20 of these exercises in Russia alone, and
that this coming week, US military forces will be
training with the Russians in Moscow.
Note from our rebuttal that we recommend hosting
the waterbomber at a US military base for a variety
of reasons, not the least of which is that it is
a good fit with MAFFS.
You don't have to imagine a MAFFS/C-130 fit with
EMERCOM/Ilyushin. I have a picture of what that
may look like right here: http://www.desastres.org/ger/global/photomedia/17.jpg
Perhaps somebody with computer skills can post this
as a picture here and not as a URL.
I hope that readers might consider alerting any of their friends who are involved with or even merely interested in any aspect of wildland firefighting to drop by this thread, as we have a truly unique opportunity here. JohnA is a Partner with Global Emergency Response, which is also contractually linked with Air Routing International, now a partnership out of Houston, and Total Corporate Aviation Services Ltd, a private federal corporation, of
Canada, HQ in Calgary.
JohnA is in a position to provide a definitive answer for you on probably any question pertaining to wildland firefighting, air tankers and waterbombers, and relevant Forest Service and Government policy. It's not often that a person in JohnA's position is available in a public forum such as this, and I hope that readers will take full advantage of his expertise to help you in understanding what's going on with wildland firefighting and what you as an interested citizen might do to help improve things.
Hi Stoat;
Thanks for that warm intro.
My request to the group assembled is first
to take a moment and ask DenverChannel whether
it is ABC's intention to bring this urgent matter
to the attention of a national audience. For me/us
to do so is too presumptuous by half. We have
a financial interest. Clearly, it is a public
interest issue.
Here's the interactive for DenverChannel:
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/denvers7/222549/detail.html
Tony Kovaleski is the 17-time Emmy Award
winner who first took the IL-76 to American TV
screens.
He did so last night on the 10:15 PM. This is,
or should be, a national issue; not just a Colorado
issue.
Il-76s are presently working in the Urals as there
is a killer wildfire emergency there which has already
taken 6 lives and burned out hundreds of homes.
First appearance of the IL-76 waterbomber
and the 747 supertanker in the same article...
from Firehouse.com:
http://cms.firehouse.com/content/ar.onId=4&id=30430
No representative of Global Emergency Response
was sought out for comment.
The Il-76 is proven while the 747 remains to be
proven.
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