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.
“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.
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.
This coincides perfectly with the “let it burn” mentality in the Forest Service bureaucracy.
When I worked for the United States Forest Service, it was guided by policies put into place by people who had been in WWII.
They had seen large scale death and destruction.
They didn’t want any of that in this country.
They have been replaced by people who want to save the trees.
The road to hell is paved by good-hearted people.
Maybe that this is a great story for CBS, after all they are ‘fake news’...not letting people know what is going on and not telling the truth in an article to let the people know what is really going on...
747 SuperTanker receives federal approval – Wildfire Today
wildfiretoday.com/2017/01/10/747-supertanker-receives-federal-approval/
Jan 10, 2017 - Above: The 747 Supertanker conducts a test drop at Colorado Springs May 4, ... to Jennifer Jones, a spokesperson for the U.S. Forest Service.
on the ground fire fighters have a union?
Why should we be the least bit surprised, the USFS is part of the the USDA, about which President Eisenhower remarked: “ It’s hard to be a farmer when you are 1,000 miles from a farm and your plough is a pencil!”
I guess the other question is, where is the Secretary of Agriculture here?
President Trump’s “problem” is that virtually none of his cabinet picks have one tenth the energy and willingness to fix stuff as he does.