Posted on 07/17/2017 7:19:54 AM PDT by gattaca
Welcome to the red tape brigade of bureaucrats.
Well, there's the problem! Fires burn in square miles and they're trying to put out fires in kilometers X square miles. Confusion!
“We’re from the government, and we’re here to help you.”
250K per day? Sounds like a lot of money until you figure in the damage caused of a an out of control fire per day.
Didn’t this happen last year also?
Deep State NeverTrumpistas in the Forset Service would rather let the forest burn down and blame it on Trump.
When I lived in NM, Forest Service was using modified WWII bombers to carry the load.
Me thinks Jim Wheeler developed the modifications for the behemoth under the Obama regime and assumed that Hillary would be POTUS and would certainly approve the 1/4 Million dollar a day airplane to reward California Democrats for putting her in office.
Evergreen started the 747 Supertanker program some years ago and never got it approved. Global is running into the same bureaucratic BS. BTW the Forest Service has approved a DC-10 for fire service. One helped extinguish a fire very near my home last Friday.
“250K per day? Sounds like a lot of money until you figure in the damage caused of a an out of control fire per day.”
However if you are a bureaucrat the cost of the damage from an out of control fire is not applied to his/her budget. A $250K per day charge for the plane can wipe out the bureaucrat’s budget very quickly.
I don’t know what the politics of those involved are, but I am willing to bet a large sum that politics is the #1 reason this has not been approved.
Follow the money.
“There’s only two things that can happen in a forest concerning fire:
1. It’s on fire.
2. It’s making more fuel for a fire.”
The National Forest Service is a fever swamp of liberalism, or so I gather from reading accounts of them.
What about the ideas of controlled burns and not putting housing and people in the middle of inflammable areas?
“A $250K per day charge for the plane can wipe out the bureaucrat’s budget very quickly.”
What is really at stake is the big money from large fires. Whole cities spring up near large fires. The Supertanker can be a silver bullet and stop a fire cold. It could easily pay for it’s self by replacing 20 or 30 drops by smaller aircraft. One of the aircraft currently used in fire fighting is a converted crop duster. Almost a joke to watch them work.
None near important people’s homes:
https://www.geomac.gov/viewer/viewer.shtml
When that changes, you’ll see this plane in the air.
Years ago, a California airship company almost built a firefighting airship, which would have been a game changer and saved many billions of dollars a year. But they went bankrupt.
Airships have a tremendous amount of lift, and because they can hover, they don’t need to drop it all at once, but can “rain out” a fire. They could also descend a wire guided fire hose, or even a wide, collapsible tube to drop a lot of high expansion fire fighting foam.
The supertanker 747 can carry 19,600 gallons of retardant or water. An airship would make a great complement to it. It would likely be just as fast or faster getting on site as well, as it can refill its tank by setting down on a lake or large open vat. And with engines on either side, it can travel at 40mph.
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