In Colorado wildfires, 'worst in state history', why won't the Forest Service use the biggest firefighting tool available?

Wasn’t Evergreen involved with some CIA operations in the Reagan era?
It would be so politically incorrect to hire those folks. . . . . . .

The simple answer is firefighting is big business and big money and big union. Putting the fire out ruins the gravy train. This is how firefighting works on every level. They wait until the fires are out of control, then come in to stand there pretty much.
, I’ve seen it with my own eyes in my high-fire area. It’s intentional.
Most logging has been banned, enabling incredible danger and a giant anti-fire infrastructure with all the funding. The warmist narritive fits nicely with Big Fire.

The free market would never let this happen. It’s amazing how ideology rules over and outweighs public good.

Reblogged this on truemajority and commented:
Great BIG kudos the Anthony Watts; Please goto his blog @ WUWT and become as informed as I have.

Saw this lovely beast in action in Alberta about 5 summers ago.A thing of beauty. 1/4 mile wide and 3 mile long swath in one pass. But as others here have said,never let a good crisis go to waste. After all,if the firefighters can’t “fight” the fire,they have no job! Think of the kiddies!!!(union exec’s kiddies in this case)

The only 747 that Obama gives a real workout is Air Force One flying back and forth across the country to fundraisers.

too bad a threatened city or a state can’t just go hire the thing to do a strategic drop or two to save their bacon and let the obamination and the feds explain why they didn’t do it.

The main problem might just be that super-tanker can’t be Green enough. The Forest Service is drastically low on tankers anyway, but that big brute can’t fit into the Green Agenda.
http://www.gazette.com/articles/obama-140889-edge-rages.html
TOWN HALL: Obama shrunk aerial firefighting fleet (poll)
Green agenda targets slurry bombers
As to the number of tankers:

Washington-based Human Events magazine reported in September of 2011 that nearly half of the federal government’s air tankers sat idle at a California airport, as wildfires ripped through national forests throughout California, Texas, New Mexico, and other states.
It turns out the Obama administration ended a long-standing contract, leaving the Forest Service with only 11 tankers to battle 50 wildfires that were burning nationwide. A decade ago, the Forest Service had 40 firefighting tankers.
The Obama administration canceled the government’s contract with Aero Union — a company with 60 employees that had been under contract with the Forest Service for 50 years. Though it canceled that contract, the administration had no plan for an immediate replacement. Aero Union CEO Britt Gourley told Human Events the administration provided no details on why the contract was ended.
“They didn’t want to talk about it,” Gourley said of Obama administration officials.

As to the Green issue:

Environmentalists have fought the use of slurry for years, which may or may not explain why Obama seems to lack enthusiasm for a robust tanker fleet. Environmentalists sued to stop the use of fire retardant after it killed 50 steelhead trout in the Santa Ynez River near Santa Barbara, Calif., in 2009. An earlier lawsuit involved the accidental dumping of between 1,000 and 2,000 gallons of fire retardant into Oregon’s Fall River in 2002, a mistake that killed all fish in the river. That mishap involved a slurry formula that is no longer used.
As a result of the most recent lawsuit, the Forest Service adopted rules that prevent dropping slurry within 300 feet of streams and lakes except when human lives are at risk. Forest officials say the rules won’t harm firefighting efforts.

Spend a billion plus dollars fighting with the equipment they got, let hundreds of thousands of acres burn causing many millions of dollars of damage with the disruption and likely injury and death of many humans.
But since that 20,000 gallon fast-flying tanker plane can’t be precise enough to guarantee that no slurry will wind up in in some water somewhere, it is all worth it to save the fish.
The joke is Green is the new Red. Now Fiery Red is the new Green.
Oh well, afterwards they can put up lots of windmills without worrying about clearance above treetops or interference from birds. The Greens will be very happy, between that and the fish they saved.

I have to wonder what the turn around time between a 747 vs a 5000 gallon drop plane would be, also the precision of the drops due to maneuverability in mountainous terrain.
But what do I know, and no the fire is not approaching my house.

Looks like they decided to make the sequel for the movie Dumb an Dumber after all, is being made at the US Forrest service.

…Because it doesn’t work. Looks good for the Tee Vee news and punters. Evergreen is a well known CIA contractor looking for media hype to suckle more lucre from Uncle Sugar.

Why doesnt Evergreen just fly their plane up to Colorado Springs or Denver and park it at the airport? Then, hold a press conference with some locals!

Evergreen is one of those evil corporations (queue death star music) that the left hates. If they put the fire out, the enevitable economic stimulus money (broken window falacy) would not be needed.

Why are people building expensive homes in known mountain fire country and then expecting taxpayers to protect them from their folly?

Time for the Colorado Gov to annex the “federal” land and make his own calls.

Pamela Gray says:
June 30, 2012 at 1:54 pm
“Good ol’ Lars. ….. He can be a conservative idiot at times.”
Pamela,
That’s not ‘brass’, m’ lass. That’s just crass.
MtK

Robin
June 30, 2012 at 3:20 pm
Anybody know if Evergreen is unionized or willing to always pay Davis-bacon wages?
###
Last year Evergreen was in a labor dispute that had been going on for a least a few years that ended up being mediated by the NLRB. The left does not like them at all, “OMG they are a CIA FRONT!!!”. They also gave $30K to R’s and $0.00 to D’s in the 2011-2012 time frame.

The USFS is manned, or should I say wom-maned, by affirmative action morons rather then the best person for the job, Please note I said the best person for the job which may be a women. They are a government agency that cowtows to the loudest lawsuit. They long ago got ride of the employees with common sense.
They can not use the bigger plane because it would let out to much water at once and cause soil erosion that would clog the stream beds for some endangered fish.

This pause in your regular programming is brought to you by Paul Simon. Take a breath and break from the usual intellectual exercise and just listen to Africa.
Call Me Al

Ben Wilson says:
June 30, 2012 at 1:54 pm
Wasn’t Evergreen involved with some CIA operations in the Reagan era?
It would be so politically incorrect to hire those folks. . . . . .
Tell that to the families whose homes have gone up in smoke.
How many hours of aircraft operation could have been leased for the price of the Solyndra kickbacks?

“Very simple answer to why Colorado is allowed to burn.
It’s a red state.”
Not we’re not, we’re purple at best and have been getting bluer as people migrate here from coastal states, especially CA.
‘worst in state history’
Not it’s not, 2002 is still worse, unless you consider the number of homes lost rather than the acreage.
Before the Buffalo Creek Fire in 1996, the largest fire in CO history was something like 3,000 acres. The difference? We used to regularly thin our forests, dispose of fuel buildup, and aggressively fight pine beetle infestations. Since around the 60s, those things no longer happen, hence the fuel buildup. As for the number of homes lost, that’s because more people are encroaching further into the Red Zone, the foothill areas that are drier but are also close to the cities so that you can have mountain living with a reasonable commute.
My brother says that the entire central part of the mountains around Silverthorne is completely beetle kill. If it goes, it will be the largest fire anyone has ever seen. We learned a lot about forests and fires after Buffalo Creek when we lost our family cabins.
One more thing, firefighters may be able to save a home hear or there, on the edge of the fire or when it’s moving more slowly, but when the winds are 65 mph, as they commonly are here, there’s NOTHING they can do. If you think they’re standing on your property in a fire storm trying to save your house, I have a bridge I can sell you.

If you are surprised by this, you’re probably confused about the nature of government. Government exists for the sole purpose of looting the people. Government uses forest fires as an excuse to loot the people, therefore it adopts policies that promote forest fires and hinder the control of forest fires. All this makes perfect sense given that government funds itself through theft and has a monopoly on coercion.

As far as the VLAT in Moutainous conditions , the VLAT is useful in drawing fire line. ridgetops lone open valleys, plains etc. the thing is it frees up smaller aircraft for more efficent attack on spot fires , breakouts, intial attack. Having herded 117’6”x 108’6″ and 100.000+ lbs.around the sky an mountains you would be surprized how meanuverable a big plane is….

Bush’s fault, right? And why not blame ex-FEMA’s Michael Brown while we’re at it. Nah… let’s just blame people for who produce CO2 and are therefore considered guilty of going about the business of living while Leftists do nothing but take a cut.

Reminds me of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill fiasco. The Europeans offered to lend us use of boats that could suck up huge amounts of oil on the surface water. King Obama refused the offer and told them to shove their boats up their butts.

Larry Ledwick (hotrod) says:
June 30, 2012 at 7:18 pm
============
Thanks for all the great info.
I hated to say it, it just seemed like the wrong platform for the ….. job.

As far as Russian jets go they are fine but the FAA says the must meet our standard.
There are soild reasons for this….

Howard says:
June 30, 2012 at 3:57 pm
…Because it doesn’t work. Looks good for the Tee Vee news and punters.
Actually, it works quite well, when the controller has an appropriate drop area for it.
Evergreen is a well known CIA contractor looking for media hype to suckle more lucre from Uncle Sugar.
Evergreen is a contractor specializing in large aircraft. They’ve done work for the CIA, the military, and for NASA — EA had the maintenance contract to support the Super Guppy 747 that hauled the space shuttle around.
Chalk this one up to Obama’s need for job figures. Those Who Are So Much More Intelligent Than We Are figure that four 5,000-gallon asset companies provide the same coverage as a single 20,000-gallon asset company at four times the number of employees. What the bureaucrats don’t realize is that they’re not going to find more than a handful of aerial firefighting companies who qualify as “small business” operators — USFS *does* realize that, and won’t issue an official statement because the bureaucrats there only have two choices:
1. lie to cover the administration which handed them that ridiculous requirement, and make themselves look like complete incompetents now and mendacious fools when the lie is exposed, or
2. tell the truth and get fired.
It’s the Chicago Way.

Would it make sense to plan ahead with fire-breaks and selective thinning of the forests? Just curious.

_Jim says:
June 30, 2012 at 7:30 pm
Jim,
You’re singin’ to the choir, Mate! What drives me to exasperation is anyone (private citizen or government bureaucrat) mincing words and wasting time on the perceived union or politically correct status of any capable emergency aid group, person, or company while simultaneously our neighbors are dying (in blunt fact) in massive conflagrations! The cold blooded heartlessness and vicious partisanship of that union/PC, enviro-mental crap borders on murder.
If your neighbor died because you stopped the ambulance to check the EMT’s union cards and verify the vehicle has a current emissions certificate, you killed him. The people blocking use of forest thinning, controlled burns, and effective firefighting asset use are directly killing people by their politically correct obstructions.
MtK

Bill Tuttle says:
June 30, 2012 at 8:34 pm
Larry Ledwick (hotrod) says:
June 30, 2012 at 7:18 pm
The 747 would be blasting a huge area with water that was well outside the burn area they are trying to hit.
You’re underestimating both the intelligence of the aerial controller and the experience of the pilots. We used to get very creative at arcing the water into a fire without overflying it or sending the bucket into the rotor system.
========================
This is the part when I make an enemy.
Were you flying a 747 ?
Are you qualified to fly a 747 ?
Would it be your first choice to put out a fire ?

Bill Tuttle says:
June 30, 2012 at 8:34 pm
Larry Ledwick (hotrod) says:
June 30, 2012 at 7:18 pm
The 747 would be blasting a huge area with water that was well outside the burn area they are trying to hit.
You’re underestimating both the intelligence of the aerial controller and the experience of the pilots. We used to get very creative at arcing the water into a fire without overflying it or sending the bucket into the rotor system.

Yes I have seen their “creativity” many times, some of them are truly artists at making the red stuff wet stuff.

_Jim says:
June 30, 2012 at 8:38 pm
…
Again, consider the VLAT for ‘strategic’ vs ‘tactical’ use. This might be a paradigm shift in asset use that commanders are unable to ‘make’ or consider?

I agree as you probably already know the Forest service is “procedure bound” in much of the things it does, heroic creativity or good judgement is not always demonstrated when things are getting out of hand (see storm king mountain)
I think “if” the asset was already available and standing by with appropriate infrastructure set up, its best use would be as you mentioned to make strategic fire lines along ridges etc. to box the fire in case other more tactical attacks do not stop the fire at the burn area.
The problem is, that probably, no one wants to be the first to use it, and no operational procedures exist for a new technology. It gets to be sort of an aerial ballet as it is keeping all the air craft properly coordinated over a burn. The other day we had 3 Sikorsky sky crane helicopters making water drops, and 2 – 4 slurry tankers along with the air attack twin all trying to keep out of each others way over a relatively small burn area. Clearing a corridor for a heavy is something they probably have not sorted out procedure wise (proper separation, avoidance of wing tip vortex etc.).
Personally on a dollar for dollar basis they could accomplish a lot more in my estimation by getting some C-130’s in the hands of the fire contractors, than by building special infrastructure to support a rarely used asset like the VLAT. They would have a more modern airframe than the current slurry bombers, that has current parts inventory.
Larry

Scarface has a good point: crises are good for causes. If the worst wildfires in Colorado’s history didn’t exist, the AGW lot would have to invent them.

A further note to encourage healthy scepticism… Check the Evergreen videos, and note that they only show drops made in relatively calm conditions. Ask yourself why that is, when airtankers are required to drop loose, finely-divided material.
Intense, rapidly-spreading fires of the kind that cause the most damage and loss of life do not occur in calm conditions.

I think as commenter’s above have stated wait to see how your Government uses this situation. Why let a good disaster go to waste, especially when you can poor the proverbial fuel on it.

u.k. (us) says:
June 30, 2012 at 9:32 pm
@ me (June 30, 2012 at 8:34 pm)
This is the part when I make an enemy.
Nope, not at all — those are good questions.
Were you flying a 747 ? Are you qualified to fly a 747 ?
Rotary- and fixed-wing Army time, currently FAA licensed for rotary-wing commercial, light helicopters up to heavy-lifters, but I have a *lot* of friends and contacts in the Big Iron world, including guys who fly the fire-bombers.
Would it be your first choice to put out a fire ?
That would depend on the terrain, the altitude, the size of the fire, the availability of suitable airfields and water sources — there’s no one-size-fits-all — and if I were flying as a controller or as a dropper. As a controller, I’d want a mix of fixed and rotary assets — fight the main axis of the fire with the fixed-wings and keep the helicopters busy on the periphery, especially along the firebreaks. As a pilot, I’d want to stick with a helicopter, either a B-205 (UH-1H) for work at 6,000 MSL and below and either an S-64 or an Mi-17 for work above 6,000 feet.

E.M.Smith says:
June 30, 2012 at 8:54 pm
“Gee…. From an administration that does Gun Walking To Mexico in the effort to ban guns; would we expect them to put out fires that could instead be attributed to Global Warming?”
Just to get my hypothesis for explaining Fast and Furious out there: its main direct intent was obviously to arm the Mexican Drug Cartels. Unlike the Bush Adm. program, Operation Wide Receiver:
1] The weapons were not tracked and have been recovered only at crime scenes – apparently sometimes merely as “throw downs” so that the perps don’t get immediately caught possessing a weapon. I’ve heard that about 76% of the ~1600-2000 weapons are still at large.
2] The Mexican Gov’t didn’t know about it.
The payoff for the Obama Adm. would be illegal Campaign contributions, laundered, say, through La Raza. In addition, the Obama Adm. is Communist, thus criminal. Criminals at this high level naturally favor doing business with like minds and m.o.’s. Which also explains why the Obama Adm. decided to prosecute California-legal pot dispensaries, and partially explains its war on Arizona’s attempt to interdict illegals, including the drug operatives, who certainly want to set up more shop in America’s cities.

Common Sense says:
June 30, 2012 at 5:55 pm
…
‘worst in state history’
Not it’s not, 2002 is still worse, unless you consider the number of homes lost rather than the acreage.

By cost, by houses burned, by houses and cars broken into by thieves … as a human rather than a tree, I’ll buy the idea that it’s the worst so far. 😉

Larry Ledwick (hotrod) says:
June 30, 2012 at 9:42 pm
The problem is, that probably, no one wants to be the first to use it, and no operational procedures exist for a new technology….
Personally on a dollar for dollar basis they could accomplish a lot more in my estimation by getting some C-130′s in the hands of the fire contractors, than by building special infrastructure to support a rarely used asset like the VLAT. They would have a more modern airframe than the current slurry bombers, that has current parts inventory.

Evergreen’s 747 has been used in Arizona and California as well as abroad. But those may not have been the Forest Service … so maybe no USFS employee wants to be the first from his/her agency to use it.
C-130s? Will you accept them if they’re military rather than private? 🙂 Four have been at the Waldo Canyon fire, and four more arrived Saturday.

Peter W. says:
June 30, 2012 at 9:51 pm
Ultimately, aircraft do NOT extinguish fires. They are only ever a supporting tool for the crews on the ground….. and big fires are only ever controlled when the weather moderates. Therefore we need to retain a reasonable level of cynicism over media claims that one piece of kit will make all the difference. Air-tankers are good, but not magic.
Excellent assessment, Peter. Air assets in firefighting, as in the military, exist solely to support the ground guys.

Larry Ledwick (hotrod) says:
June 30, 2012 at 9:42 pm
It gets to be sort of an aerial ballet as it is keeping all the air craft properly coordinated over a burn.
A controller I yakked with after one fire told me it was like directing “Swan Lake” with chainsaws.

I have known a few golfers from the narcissism generation in my life. They hate ticks, so they’d probably be content to let them fry in the bush. If they have beliefs in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming and perceive the wildfires to aid the fear to others enabling easier control, well that’d be all the better! Hmm?

Earlier I meant to include a link to aerial photos of burned houses with some near burned forest but many that just seem to have caught fire from the house next door.
I suspect that most of the 32,000 evacuees did not live close enough to forest or scrubland for their houses to have picked up fire directly from those sources. And their housing developments weren’t short-grass prairie anymore, either.
I know this with certainty for the house I lived in that was in an evac area, anyway. If it had burned, it just plain would have been because a suburban neighborhood had caught fire and was burning house-to-house.

Arizona based company and the Feds have it in for AZ and all connected?

^^^ Oregon
=//=//=//=//=

Cand.Jur. says:
June 30, 2012 at 10:25 pm
Does the federal government have a monopoly on fighting forest fires? Why can’t the State of Colorado hire the 747 to help put out fires threatening the life and property of Colorado citizens in Colorado Springs and elsewhere?

Well, the feds do pretty much have a monopoly over fires in National Forests and on military property. (The Air Force Academy was part of the Waldo Canyon fire’s evacuated area.) The 747 was used in California, but I suspect there was little or no federal land involved.
Also, the state doesn’t have the authority to act for these people – they’re the responsibility of the cities and towns that they live in or else the counties if they’re on unincorporated land.
The exceptions would be the few people living on state land. Students in dormitories at state universities, for example. And bigger issues have seen intervention on flimsier pretexts. But all the agencies involved are working hard to cooperate within an Incident Command System.

Gerry Dorrian says:
June 30, 2012 at 9:52 pm
Scarface has a good point: crises are good for causes. If the worst wildfires in Colorado’s history didn’t exist, the AGW lot would have to invent them.
——————————————————————
The “worst fires in Colorado history” are not this fire, or the 2002 fire. CAGW proponents like to use their personal ignorance as defining history, and so they “invent” their own history.
This fire was far worse.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/06/28/massive-1898-fire-in-colorado/
Also, in regard to CAGW in Colorado, well, it appears there is no CAGW in Colorado.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/06/25/jeff-masters-making-up-statistics-in-colorado/
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/06/30/phil-jones-shows-no-trend-in-colorado-temperatures-since-1850/

Ed Dahlgren says:
June 30, 2012 at 11:57 pm
…
C-130s? Will you accept them if they’re military rather than private? 🙂 Four have been at the Waldo Canyon fire, and four more arrived Saturday.

Not sure what the question is?? The C-130 is a marvelous airframe I don’t care who flies it. One of its major advantages is it is an airframe with a very long history of deployment, that means it is a mature design and well understood. It is also still in production so the part system is not a scavenger hunt for rare bits and pieces. If the Civilian contractors had a fleet of them I am sure they would make good use of the birds. I do care about “when” the military flies any slurry missions, as noted above as a matter of good government policy, the government should never usurp civilian enterprise.

Ed Dahlgren says:
July 1, 2012 at 2:13 am
Earlier I meant to include a link to aerial photos of burned houses with some near burned forest but many that just seem to have caught fire from the house next door.
I suspect that most of the 32,000 evacuees did not live close enough to forest or scrubland for their houses to have picked up fire directly from those sources. And their housing developments weren’t short-grass prairie anymore, either.
I know this with certainty for the house I lived in that was in an evac area, anyway. If it had burned, it just plain would have been because a suburban neighborhood had caught fire and was burning house-to-house.

Yes modern zoning is the cause of most of those housing losses in subdivisions. Building codes and home owner association restrictions regarding acceptable roofing materials, and permitted spacing between adjacent structures (fire break width between buildings) are often the root cause of large subdivision losses, not wild land management practice.
Many subdivisions in modern Metro areas have home spacing much closer than was the norm 30+ years ago so the developers the tax authority can squeeze and extra few homes into the subdivision (also one of the reasons for the insane winding streets with lots of cul-de-sacs rather than an efficient grid layout of streets.)
The 12 -20 foot separation between homes which you see in some of the subdivisions will only prevent fire propagation from one property to the next if a fire fighter is standing there with a hose protecting the exposure of the neighbor house from the radiant heat and direct fire contact from home to home. In winds gusting 30-60 mph those narrow fire break spacings are just about useless.
Larry

highflight56433 says:
July 1, 2012 at 7:08 am
…there is another aspect behind the scenes that contribute to the size and scope of these fires. The aviation group who hire the pilots to fly these fire fighting missions take their sweet time getting started. Bigger the fire, the more they fly, the more money in the bank. Pretty sad.

If that is true (entirely possible) the solution is to properly apply the military assets.
If the incident commander says he needs 6 aircraft on the fire, and 2 are on site and 4 civilian contractor aircraft are on route but won’t be operational for 36 hours. If the local military assets can be on station and operational sooner, activate them and let them deploy until the civilian contractor is on station and fully operational, then stand them down as back up.
It would be interesting to see if the Forest Service contracts for air tanker service include a provision for timely response, and what the service level agreement is for operational activity after a call out is made.
Having worked in emergency management I would caution how ever that many times there are logistic concerns that complicate what on the surface would be simple decisions. You are not fighting just one fire but a complex of fires over several states. Each day they evaluate risks and asset needs and try to deploy limited assets to best service all the fires. You also have the logistics hurdles regarding how long it takes to get an asset like the military tankers in service and on station after their are activated. It takes time for National Guard pilots to get off work at their civilian jobs, report for duty, get briefed, get all the necessary approvals, have ground crews configure the air craft, fuel and fly them to their destination. Then they need to get briefed and prepped to fly a mission once there. Sometimes those lead times are long enough that they would “just” begin to be operational at the same time or even later than civilian assets which are already moving in that direction.
Sometimes no matter what you do either option gets results about the same time in the future.
Larry

Common Sense: “My brother says that the entire central part of the mountains around Silverthorne is completely beetle kill. If it goes, it will be the largest fire anyone has ever seen.”
I was curious so I googled “Silverthorne Co” and looked at the area on Google maps. If you back off the resolution a bit you can easily see brownish mountainsides in all directions from the city, and greener ones farther out. Scanning in, you can easily see dead pine logs laying on the mountainsides like toothpicks, no doubt numbering in the thousands. If those mountains were private property, I doubt such waste would ever have occurred, and the mountainsides might even still be green, though perhaps someone more knowledgeable about logging in the west would disagree? Incidentally, it looks like each mountainside of brown trees is about 4 to 6 square miles on the map, and there are several brown mountainsides visible around Silverthorne.
One further comment: This article, and particularly the comments accompanying it, is a good example of why I regularly visit WUWT. The articles are usually good, but the comments are, in the main, truly excellent, because people with real life experience in almost any issue discussed in here manage to show up and educate the rest of us, and each other. It’s the back and forth in the comments that puts WUWT at the top of the heap when it comes to getting an accurate assessment of the article topic. As an example, I suspect that, before the comments cease, “someone more knowledgeable about logging in the west” will address my point about private ownership as it would apply to use of the forest resources.

I’ll quickly provide some info on factors:
– there are other large tankers, incuding DC-10s and http://www.martinmars.com (which was used well in the fires in Mexico south of Del Rio TX, picking up water from a reservoir near Del Rio).
– the tanker must be able to safely maneuver to hit the hot spot of the fire. The first Mars tanker crashed due poor piloting strategy, the first Tanker10 brushed through tree tops on one run. – Larger tankers may be able to simply put water everywhere, perhaps not viewed as efficient use of money. When Western Forest Products used the Mars against a fire in the dificult “Sooke potholes” terrain west of Victoria BC two Mars made repeated drops then went into a holding pattern while smaller aircraft like helicopters hit remaining hotspots (probably using buckets on a long line to stay above the narrow canyon)
– similarly, ground fire fighters may manually address remaining embers and such if safe to do so (presumably that’s who the S-61 helicopter were getting off the mountain before dark, when it crashed in the Chico CA area, an especially bad accident due number of people on board).
– good spotting is essential to effectiveness and safety, the spotter aircraft crew determine safe routes for the tanker drop. The current owner of the one operational Mars tanker uses a fast helicopter, equipped with IR and datalink, and always in radio contact with the Mars.
– as for jets vs turboprop, size is a factor for some fires, the DC-10 and 747 are much larger than the C-130 (which got a bad reputation with USFS due inadequate maintenance)
Many factors for optimum use, with fires near homes such as now in CO and in 2003 near Kelowna BC we’d like authorities to throw everything they can at the fire.

Was this not the same tactic used by the US government during the Gulf oil leak?
Refusing to call in Dutch skimmer boats and the biggest skimmer in the world?
Is there a pattern here?

As with the Gulf oil incident, why let a crisis go to waste?

Actually the DC-10 isn’t bad it does have limitations but for laying line_if they use Retardant_
it’s great for that and frees up smaller aircraft. But, as been discussed it is not perfect.
Perfect would be a DC-7 with PW-100’s…

Well after this discussion, today’s events over at the Jeffco Airtanker base are sort of funny.
I just got back from there and the Canadian Convair 580’s which have been in use from the beginning on the High Park fire up near Ft. Collins are no where to be seen (at least for the last couple hours) —– but the day after the Media event for the President in Csprings, guess what ?
I just watched 3 ANG C-130’s load with slurry and depart for the north (presumably for the High Park Fire). They were aircraft from both the Wyoming ANG and the North Carolina ANG.
I’m sure many of us will read into this some political posturing after the Presidents visit.
Larry

Ed Dahlgren says:
June 30, 2012 at 11:56 pm
Gary Hladik says:
June 30, 2012 at 7:35 pm
…
Indeed, there may be very good reasons for not using the VLAT, but if so the Forest Service should be able to explain them.
Well, maybe they’ll get around to it; I’m not going to stress over it. I saw something somewhere (can’t recall at the moment) that said Evergreen had wanted an exclusive-use contract from the Forest Service – which I think meant having a plane and crew ready 24 hours a day – and the USFS wouldn’t agree. Could be a valid cost-saving argument if still true.

I suggest you re-read the letter from Evergreen. A $50 million cost to develop the 747 air tanker – highly skilled and specialized pilots and crew required to operate. Extensive maintenance and inspections required by government to operate.
It costs huge sums to keep any of these firefighting aircraft operational and available, let alone the 747 program.
Yet the idiots at the USFS making the contract decisions refused to provide any financial minimum guarantee. A “Call when needed” contract is ridiculous for an asset with this kind of cost base.
The Evergreen tanker uses a pressurized system to disperse retardant – it can moderate the dispersal from high velocity to as they say “falling rain” – they can also do segmented drops – allowing one tank load to hit multiple spots. It is not as some claim a single 20,000 gallon 1/4 mile long drop.
The pressurized system also allows the aircraft to operate at a few hundred feet higher altitude – adding to its safety margin. This higher altitude drop capability also potentially allows for night drops and or in lower visibility.
Its 20,500 gal retard load capacity is the equivalent of operating the aircraft with a little more than 100 people on board – for an aircraft that holds as many as 600+. At 150,000 lbs under gross takeoff weight the aircraft has a considerable safety margin and significant increased performance.
With 20,500 gal load capacity (at appx 9lb per gal) and operating at 150,000 lbs below gross weight appears they should be able to carry appx 147,000 lbs of fuel. After taking out taxi (out and in), climb out (to estimated 15,000 feet) and descent – it looks like they would have appx 92,000 lbs of available “mission” fuel. If I got the correct numbers and calculated correctly this should give the 747 starting with a full 20,500 gal retardant load well over 3 hours flight time. I tried to be conservative in fuel calcs but if a lot of the time is in low speed high drag “drop” configuration air time could be somewhat less.
Regardless – a single 747 flight could make the same drops as 7 flights of the smaller aircraft.
I also think the high drop capacity could have been critical in attacking the Queens Canyon portion – which led to the loss of 340+ homes IN Colorado Springs. Reports show they knew this was a critical area and if fire breached the canyon it would make it in to the city. A couple high capacity 747 drops it seems could have been a significant benefit.
The alternative would seem to have been to heavily target the area immediately up slope from the homes – with retardant drops in advance of the fire. The 747’s large capacity would have been perfect for that. Could even have targeted the homes once fire reached them.
I suspect that the 747 (and DC 10’s) can operate in conditions where smaller aircraft and helo’s cannot – with their large mass and slightly higher altitude operating abaility – would seem they’re less susceptible to turbulence, wind etc. and could have continued operating when others were grounded and/or at night.
Extreme risk public safety events are really stupid place to invoke or try to practice government cost accountability as well. As is the idea of protecting private contractors by restricting use of government assets in a high risk public safety incident.
If you are having a heart attack, a policy that first checks for private ambulances, and only dispatched EMT’s if none are available would be pretty stupid. That is exactly what a “private/local first” policy to firefighting is.
The attacks on the Obama administration over their failure to maintain an adequate availability of fire fighting aircraft are entirely valid. Not only have they blown off Evergreen, but as the “Aero” story above noted also have shut down other private contractors – over bureaucracy and little more.
In that case the company passed all airworthiness requirements – their aircraft were certified safe to fly. Some pencil pusher however decided they didn’t like their long term maintenance plan. So they cancelled their contract and refused to use them – their 8 aircraft sat idle while Texas burned – for zero valid reason.
The air tanker fleet is down to a couple handful of aircraft from close to 50 not long ago. These important tools to fight these mega fires are no longer available thanks directly to the current administrations actions – or lack there of.
In Colorado Springs at least 2 people are dead and almost 350 homes destroyed – not out in the forest as some here have claimed – not built where they shouldn’t be … these homes and deaths were IN THE CITY of Colorado Springs.
In my opinion … and I was in the forest, near the fire lines during the Hayman Fire and others – have seen close up and first hand the destruction as it was occurring, but also seeing the effects even years later of fires like the Buffalo Creek fire … had these assets first been available, and second had the available assets been deployed immediately rather than waiting days – the loss of life and property could have been significantly reduced.
Its time to do away with all the bureaucracy and silly protectionist “rules” and do what every rational and logical person knows is right. Properly manage these national forests. That means appropriate selective logging, controlled burns, and all the other best forestry management practices.

And equally moronic is any decision to restrict use of aerial fire retardant because a few fish may be killed. When faced with extreme danger, including possible loss of life, the extremely minor and relatively rare negative affects of fire retardants are dramatically outweighed. Management practices MUST be for the overall benefit of the resource – and damages to small, even tiny, groups must be balanced against the whole.
The spotted owl “protectors” saga is a perfect example of the extreme ignorance and arrogance of these groups. For decades these would be spotted owl protectors blocked virtually all forestry management in a huge portion of the spotted owl habitat. When one groups actions were ultimately defeated, a different group would simply sue on the same facts again and tie things up for another decade while being litigated.
All the while fuel load were dramatically increasing due to these idiots blocking even the best, most prudent, good forestry management practices.
The result were the huge Cerro Grande (and other nearby) fires that even threatened the Los Alamos nuclear facility – destroying 689 square miles – nearly all of the spotted owl habitat was destroyed. The idiot treehuggers succeeded in causing exactly what they claimed to be trying to protect – almost complete destruction of the entire habitat.
This story regarding the Cerro Grande fire in Los Alamos LINK HERE provides details of a university study of the fire:

… the intensity of the catastrophic habitat destroying fires was a direct result of the fuel load biomass levels created by the Mexican Spotted Owl lawsuit. Logging restrictions were imposed on government controlled lands. The study reveals US Forest Service controlled lands in New Mexico forests alone had accumulated approx. 1.4 billion board feet of fuel load biomass buildup between the years of 1986 to 1999, as logging declined 82.4% during the period.
All of the Mexican Spotted Owl habitat in the Los Alamos area and the owl nesting protected locations were lost, as were many of the ground dwelling endangered species.

This same study found that the growth of the forest because of the lack of logging was significantly detrimental to the owls, with open areas decreasing by almost 20% and bare ground decreasing almost 40% – both necessary for the owl to see and catch prey. During the same time the tree density has increased over 28%.
The extremely interesting discovery however was the ancillary effects of this tree mass – the huge impairment on water resources. They note a rule of thumb is each 1′ diameter tree uses appx. 50 gals of water per day. Historical records show typically there were 300-500 trees per acre, but currently there 1,000 to 5,000 trees per acre. At the low end that would correspond to at least a doubling (550 to 100 per acre) of water used by trees – at the low end approx 50,000 gals per day per acre.
Multiply that at least doubling of water used by trees by hundreds of thousands of acres and it seems clear why the droughts are increasing. For just 100,000 acres the total conservative water needs at avg 1,000 trees per acre would be 5 billion gals per day – a 2.5 billion gal per day increase from 500 trees per acre typical not long ago. This water is not available to flow to streams and reservoirs.
Yet another seemingly clear benefit of logging – of managing these forested lands to maintain their normal, typical forest makeup. Thin trees by 50% and you have 2.5 billion gals less water needed, much healthier trees and forest, and a dramatically reduced fire risk.
And in Colorado’s case it would seem unhealthy trees stressed due to lack of water could be more susceptible to pine bark beetles as well.
The Arizona Wallow fire last year was almost identical to the Cerro Grande fire – covering more than 538,000 acres, larger even than the 2002 Rodeo-Chediski Fire that burned 468,638 acres.
Between just the two – Wallow and Rodeo fires – 20 percent of the Mexican spotted owl nests that exist in the world were lost.
MORE INFO AT LINK HERE
What is so stupid is the fish are killed by these mega fires anyway. And a lot more than the 50 fish that a retardant drop allegedly killed. Heat from these fires baked streams and killed aquatic life. And then the damage from the fires – that destroyed all vegetation – also caused the streams to be filled with silt and ash
SOS Forests wrote about retardant use as follows:

The Big Lie About Fire Retardant
A reader writes, “Doesn’t fire retardant kill fish?”
No it doesn’t. In one case in history, when an entire truckload of the concentrate drained into a stream after the truck drove off the road and over the embankment, a few fish were killed.
Never in history is there one single case of even a single fish being killed by aerially-applied fire retardant.
Never ever ever. It’s a total LIE that fire retardant kills fish.
What kills fish is fire (and firebombing).
Wait, you say, how can fire kill a fish under the water?
Because forest fires burn so hot they sometimes boil streams or at least raise the temperature of the water enough to kill fish.
That’s right, sports fans. Fires burn right to the water’s edge. This may shock you, but riparian vegetation isn’t fireproof!
The new rule prohibits fire retardant in so-called riparian zones 300 feet on either side of streams. So that vegetation will burn and the streams will boil.
Fire also creates ash, which when wet becomes lye, and gets into the water and raises the pH. Fire turns fresh water alkaline via the ash, and that kills fish.
Fire also burns the humus layer down to mineral soil, which then erodes into streams — killing fish by reducing the dissolved oxygen and coating fish gills so the fish strangulate.
The fishing is nil after a forest fire. Nobody goes into a burn zone to catch fish, because the fish are dead. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit claimed that fire retardant use ruined their fishing experience (no kidding, it’s in the plea) but the opposite is true — fire kills fish, fire retardant saves them.
Which is all well known to the USFS, but they are on a mission to incinerate America’s forests, and so they kowtowed to the fire retardant LIE.
There was nothing scientific about the fire retardant decision. It was pure politics — and arson politics at that. They are arsonists in a big way. Million-acre arsonists. Arsonists who are burning the Federal Estate with glee and abandon.
Which is why the USFS shuns fire retardant and embraces napalm as the their treatment of choice for our forests.
What ought to be banned in the US Forest Service. Keep them by law no nearer than 30 miles from any public forestland. Dump retardant on them if they get any closer

And more example of gross ignorance pointed out by SOS – what is the USFS replacement for retardant?
Basically, its napalm.

USFS Replaces Fire Retardant With Napalm
The US Forest Service will no longer be using fire retardant to douse forest fires. Instead they will be using a type of napalm to blast America’s forests to charcoal.
In response to a lawsuit brought by the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, and the subsequent ruling by Federal Judge Donald Molloy [here], Thomas Tidwell, Chief, USDA Forest Service decided last December to ban the use of fire retardant on 30 percent of USFS lands.
The Nationwide Aerial Application of Fire Retardant on National Forest System Land — Record of Decision is [here]. Some quotes:

Aerial retardant drops are not allowed in mapped avoidance areas for threatened, endangered, proposed, candidate or sensitive (TEPCS) species or in waterways … Some species and habitats require that only water be used to protect their habitat and populations; these habitats and populations have been mapped as avoidance areas. Incident commanders and pilots are required to avoid aerial application of fire retardant in avoidance areas for TEPCS species or within the 300-foot (or larger) buffers on either side of waterways. … When approaching an avoidance area mapped for TEPCS species, waterway, or riparian vegetation visible to the pilot, the pilot will terminate the application of retardant approximately 300 feet before reaching the mapped avoidance area or waterway. … [T]he Proposed Action prescribed a 300-foot buffer area between retardant application and surface waters on national forests, excluding about 30 percent of NFS lands from aerially delivered retardant use. …

In Western Oregon, a 300-foot buffer on either side of streams encompasses about 85 percent of the land base (because it’s wet here and we have lots of streams). So the USFS has effectively banned the use of fire retardant on the most productive lands in the National Forest System.
What they didn’t ban was the use of aerially applied incendiaries, such as were used in Western Oregon last summer to catastrophically burn (100 percent mortality) green, old-growth, spotted owl habitat [here].
Fire retardant is a phosphorus-nitrogen-water based slurry that puts fires out. It has no effect on plants or animals, except to very slightly fertilize the soil. The effect is so slight it cannot be measured. Oh yes, another effect of fire retardant is to save the plants and animals from incineration and immolation.

Much more here: http://westinstenv.org/sosf/
If I were the little fishies or the poor old spotted owl I would not want ANYTHING to do with the alleged protectors. These idiots have succeeded destroying – not saving – a large portion of the spotted owl (and other protected habitat) in the country (and a large share of worldwide habitat) through their ill-conceived efforts.
Wanna know whats even scarier? These same people will tell you they are perfectly fine and happy with the result. They will tell you fire is “natural” and as such these fires are perfectly normal, natural and A-OK with them. All the while IGNORING there is NOTHING remotely NATURAL about the severity of the fires – a severity directly cause by their interference in both the natural course and interference with the Forest Service using best forestry management practices to prevent these severe and catastrophic effects.
The term eco-terrorist is a perfect description for these people. All they care about is winning their battle – forcing their unsupported by science beliefs on others. And then being oblivious when it all blows up and causes the very thing they claim to be trying to prevent.
.

And yet another reason to be upset with the stupid federal bureaucracy:

After 11 years, U.S. Fire Program Analysis system still isn’t ready
Eleven years ago, federal agencies announced a bold strategy to battle the growing threat of catastrophic wildfires.
Across the West, vast expanses of forests had grown dangerously thick from decades of all-out fire suppression. At their edges, an army of urban refugees bored deeper and deeper into the woods, building dream homes in the trees.
The government’s planned response: a sophisticated new computer system — called Fire Program Analysis, or FPA — that would enable firefighting agencies to coordinate their efforts and maximize their resources.
For years, the U.S. Government Accountability Office has warned Congress in reports and committee hearings that federal firefighting agencies were failing to develop the vital new tool they promised more than a decade ago.
Tom Tidwell, the Forest Service chief … acknowledged that the Forest Service faces daunting challenges in its efforts to control wildfires, a task that has grown from 13 percent to 48 percent of the agency budget since 1995. He said unnaturally thick growths of trees have accumulated in “65 million acres just in the nation’s forests,” which the Forest Service is hoping to treat with thinning and burning measures at a rate of up to 4 million acres a year.
FPA was established [in 2001] after officials in Congress and the White House Office of Management and Budget grew unhappy with the way federal agencies developed their wildland-fire budget requests, believing them to be wish lists rather than based on cost-effective analysis, said Stephen Botti, who led the project in its first phases before retiring as the National Park Service’s fire-program planning manager.
But when the tool was used for a preliminary analysis in 2006, not everyone liked what it found, Botti said. The results showed which areas needed more resources and which needed less, throwing into uncertainty budgets used for staff programs and some administrative overhead, he said.
For instance, one recommendation was to move resources from coastal Alaska, where wildfires are relatively rare, to California, where they regularly wreak havoc in populated areas, Botti said.
“We’re talking about a couple of billion dollars in federal wildland-fire funds here,” he said. “Any time you tinker with that, it becomes political in a hurry. There was pushback from the bureaus that the answer was not acceptable. This was mainly the Forest Service objecting to that.”

MORE HERE

Of course, if Evergreen wanted to really p*ss them off, what they’d do is go and fly a few firefighting missions anyway – drop in a nice photogenic area where a pile of camera crews were filming the fire encroaching on a bunch of houses so that they were all over the TV, and THEN go to press saying the forest service were threatening to prosecute them for trying to help…

I just got back from the tanker base, the Convair 580’s are gone. They have been re-tasked to South Dakota. Two of the C130’s are on the ramp for the night and the third the COANG 130 just departed tanker base. Not sure if he is flying north to make one last drop (sun set locally) or returning to home base (probably Buckley AFB for the night).
Larry

Howard says:
July 1, 2012 at 9:51 am
Bill
My bro is active CalFire flying the twin engine hueys running buckets on longlines. The consensus among his circle of wildland firefighters and pilots is that big jets cannot go slow enough nor low enough to drop their load with enough precision or concentration to do any good. Cali has deployed the DC10 (The Govenator knew how to fake heroic gestures for the rubes and punters) which was great for PR and completely ineffective on the ground. Water from these supertankers completely evaporated before hitting the ground like virga.
Sounds like the wrong tool in the wrong place used both improperly and too high above the ground, Howard. Kudos to your brother on the longline work — any time you’re suspending the bucket farther than 50 feet below the belly of the aircraft requires extraordinary skill to control the load.
A. Scott says:
July 1, 2012 at 2:00 pm
The attacks on the Obama administration over their failure to maintain an adequate availability of fire fighting aircraft are entirely valid. Not only have they blown off Evergreen, but as the “Aero” story above noted also have shut down other private contractors – over bureaucracy and little more.
In that case the company passed all airworthiness requirements – their aircraft were certified safe to fly. Some pencil pusher however decided they didn’t like their long term maintenance plan. So they cancelled their contract and refused to use them – their 8 aircraft sat idle while Texas burned – for zero valid reason.
It sounds like someone in the FAA overstepped his bounds — they have no mandate to tell a company how to run their long-term maintenance plan, just to insure that their *current* maintenance operation is effective. And if it wasn’t an FAA pencil-pusher who made the call, the contractor has solid grounds to file a whopping lawsuit.

Appears it was a C-130 — details not all sorted out yet.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Black-Hills-FOX-News/122161657947
http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/plane-goes-down-fighting-white-draw-fire/article_9b8b5de1-862c-570d-add9-9231cb3fe5e5.html

“Putting the Forest Service in charge of a forest is like putting Jack Kevorkian in charge of a cancer clinic.” -Dave Hannah, retired graverobber (US Park service archeologist)

Several pictures I have found on the web show that serial number recently painted with the tanker ID MAFFS number 7.
Larry