Posted on 10/26/2007 6:11:38 AM PDT by kellynla
High winds and bureaucratic wrangling kept much needed firefighting aircraft on the ground this week, but whom to blame seemed murkier Thursday than the skies above Southern California.
Some legislators accused federal fire officials and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of making a slow-footed response followed by fast dancing and photo ops.
Schwarzenegger called the criticism "a bunch of nonsense."
But one federal legislator was poised to call for congressional hearings.
"We'll wait until the smoke clears until I start raising hell," said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach. "We need to put people under oath to find out whether a lack of an aerial capacity in any way affected the magnitude of damage."
Throughout the five-day inferno, example after example was found of aircraft delayed by weather or by bureaucratic policy or just plain lack of preparation.
For instance, a delay of 53 minutes to meet state regulations prevented three National Guard helicopters from taking off at all Monday, when fire suppression was critically needed during the early stages of the Santiago fire in Orange County and other major blazes.
The choppers were requested by the state Office of Emergency Services at 4:30 p.m. Sunday, but the civilian pilots were given 24 hours to report, including eight hours to sleep.
By the time the helicopters and pilots were ready to fly – about noon Monday – the California Deportment of Forestry and Fire Protection didn't have the required fire spotters to ride with them into the field.
By the time spotters were available, 53 minutes later, weather conditions had gotten so bad the craft were grounded. The three choppers didn't hit the air until Tuesday.
(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...
ping
At first, I thought it said this. And then I thought, "What are they talking about? We can't get rid of Plame from our TVs!". My bad.
‘”We need to put people under oath to find out whether a lack of an aerial capacity in any way affected the magnitude of damage.”’
Lack of aerial capacity was almost certainly not an issue. Even if the aircraft had been able to fly in the high winds, the embers blown far downwind would have jumped any dropped retardant anyhow.
Nothing like making political hay out of a tragedy though, right Dana?
Schwarzenegger called the criticism “a bunch of nonsense.”
Hey, Arnold stole this line from here - since most believe his administration is a bunch of nonsense.
Is Arnold a lurker...
Forgot to add, on the RINO meter I’m pretty sure Dana scores a solid ‘10’. ;-)
Is Rohrabacher’s ‘10’ on the RINO-Meter above or below Ahnuld’s ‘10’ or the ‘10’ of the fools who voted for him?
Didn’t stop planes from flying as early as LAST FRIDAY!
gezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Hindsight is always 40/40.
“Forgot to add, on the RINO meter I’m pretty sure Dana scores a solid?”
and you would be as wrong about Dana as you are about planes not being able to fly...
now, post another errant remark and see if you can strike out before 7AM local! LMAO
I don’t know where you live but you obviously don’t know squat about OC!
Well, I can’t really believe that. Since we sent both our C130s from the 302nd Tactical Airlift Wing to help put out those fires. (We have a lot of planes, but two remain always outfitted for firefighting. They were deployed as soon as the Federal government declared a disaster. So, the people who are whining really don’t know what they are talking about.)
Once again, politicos with no knowledge of the job mouth off.
I guess flying them into hell winds to die would make Dana feel better.
As they state ‘held either by winds or bureaucracy’, you can’t have bothe Dana.
Idiots.
bothe = both.
ping
‘Lack of aerial capacity was almost certainly not an issue. Even if the aircraft had been able to fly in the high winds, the embers blown far downwind would have jumped any dropped retardant anyhow.
Nothing like making political hay out of a tragedy though, right Dana?’
I like Dana, but he’s running off at the mouth here, and displaying a lack of knowledge about his home states own laws and regulations.
And as you said, the high winds were problematic, to say the least.
Had they ignored the laws, and a crash resulted, there would have been hell to pay.
So it wasn’t the 53 min delay that kept them from flying that day, but the weather. They would only have had perhaps 45 min to do something before being forced out for the remainder of the day.
Stupid article.
Okay Kel, give this to Dana for the hearing as well:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1916737/posts
Does that include those of us who LIVE HERE who are inquiring about the competency of those responsible for getting the equipment & personnel to these fires?
amazing how people who don’t even live here, have all kinds of uninformed opinions and anyone who KNOWS the situation and have issues is a “whiner”
maybe you should stick to CO and let those of us who live here deal with our own problems...its not like you don’t have enough problems in your state that you have all kinds of spare time that you can come over here and criticize... get rid of some of those clowns you call teachers over there and you'll be doing something constructive instead of calling Californians' concerns "whining"... you're the one who doesn't "know what they are talking about!"
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