AP labels the 2012 Colorado wildfires worst in state history in this story.
My friend and fellow climate skeptic, nationally syndicated radio host Lars Larson, asks some pointed and pertinent questions about what appears to be some of the most idiotic policy ever devised by government. Since we’ve been covering some of the folly of trying to link the fire to global warming, I thought this government folly with trying to put it out would go along with the issues discussed here. – Anthony
He writes in an email to me from Friday:
I have new questions rolling around in my head every day but there are at least four things I know for sure this morning. This year the U.S. Forest Aervice will spend north of a billion dollars fighting forest fires across America. Billions of dollars worth of trees owned by the American people will go up in flames. And a $50 million dollar airplane that could put those fires out faster sits on the ground in Arizona because the U.S. Forest Service refuses to hire Evergreen Aviation. Now you may be saying, “There must be a good reason”. That’s what I thought, but then I remembered that government is capable of multibillion dollar stupidity on a daily basis. The Forest Service offers no explanation whatsoever.
And evergreen aviation points out that their 747 supertanker fire fighting plane has been hired by Mexico and Israel to fight fires and earned high marks. It drops ten times as much water as the biggest forest service tanker in use…and does it at half the cost per gallon. It’s big enough and fast enough to cover fires anywhere in America…and the forest service refuses to use it…and it’s your forests that are going up in flames.
Today’s statement from Evergreen Aviation about why the U.S. Forest service refuses to use its 747 flying supertanker firefighting plane.
http://www.evergreenaviation.com/pdf/Supertanker_Statement_062912.pdf
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Date: 6/29/12
Evergreen International Aviation Statement Concerning the Supertanker
We felt compelled to release this statement due to the overwhelming amount of calls we have received concerning the availability of the Evergreen Supertanker. We at Evergreen are saddened by the fire devastation now taking place in many Western US states. For over 60 years, we have supported the US Forest Service in its important mission to battle and control fires, and it is our desire to continue this rich history of service. While our helicopters continue to work fires for the State of Alaska under State contracts, unfortunately, our Boeing 747 Supertanker Very Large Air Tanker (VLAT) aircraft awaits activation with the US Forest Service.
We have never been told why we have not been activated by the US Forest Service, so we can only speculate as to why we face this outcome:
1. We were offered a Call-When-Needed (CWN) contract a few years ago by the US Forest
Service (proving our technical viability), but we were never called into action resulting in
a multi-million dollar loss to our company as we were required to maintain and have
flight crew available should we be called. The only contract that will sustain a VLAT
program is an Exclusive-Use contract, which provides an income stream to sustain the
program even if the asset is not utilized. We invested over $50M to develop this asset in
the firm belief that we could better control fires as we proved in Israel and Mexico under
CWN contracts that we could afford to offer at the time.
2. There have been recent changes to the US Forest Service procurement policies. Today,
only small businesses are eligible for contract awards concerning air tanker assets;
Evergreen is not a small business and, therefore, is excluded from consideration for any
award.
3. The US Forest Service’s specification for Next Generation Air Tanker aircraft limits tank
size to 5,000 gallons. The Supertanker’s tanks hold about 20,000 gallons, which is
considered outside the USFS specification. The USFS just awarded contracts to four
small businesses with aircraft equipped with these smaller tanks, and excluded the
Evergreen Supertanker. Since World War II, tank capacities have been in the 3,000 to
5,000 gallon range, yet we continue to face the growing threat from mega fires today. We
believe the Supertanker represents an overwhelming response to this growing threat.
Please contact your state representatives in Washington DC to demand an examination of their current procurement policies concerning VLAT aircraft. The US Forest Service says it best: “Only YOU can prevent wildfires.”
==============================================================
Here’s Lars Friday interview with Evergreens VP:
Here’s Lars interview with Evergreen three weeks ago:
Here are videos of tanker that could be fighting fires in Colorado and elsewhere…that have killed Americans, burned houses, destroyed public property and timber
Where’s the President?
Check out my new page and “like” me at The Lars Larson Show
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“Why won’t the Forest Service use the biggest firefighting tool available?”
It’s official policy: don’t let a good crisis go to waste.
They need the scare of this to further the AGW-agenda. Be prepared for worse to come.
Wasn’t Evergreen involved with some CIA operations in the Reagan era?
It would be so politically incorrect to hire those folks. . . . . . .
Good ol’ Lars. Used to be a broadcast reporter in Oregon. Can’t remember which station (an Oregon affiliate of NBC, ABC, CBS, or channel 12). He can be a conservative idiot at times. But in this case, he’s done some right good reporting.
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.
I can think of one reason why governmental organisations prefer to pursue policies that make disastrous situations worse. They hope to use the resultant adverse publicity for their own ends, that these aims are usually counter to the wellbeing of ordinary people is simply irrelevant to their way of thinking.
The free market would never let this happen. It’s amazing how ideology rules over and outweighs public good.
Anyone who thinks the paper-pushers at the Forst Service and other government agencies in charge of our tax dollars have any remaining control over the idiotic rules, legislation and regulations for handing out contracts, you are sorely mistaken. I have worked with government contracting officers and all the accompanying red tape for years. There is no fixing it. For the work I have done with the defense agencies and DoE as a contractor, I can only offer the following true quote from one of the engineers who supervised our work: “Mike, the Government got rid of all their good engineers, policy-makers and contracting officers decades ago ago….and now you have me.” Translate that to mean: “we don’t know what we are doing and there is no leadership to fix it”.
As with all great great societies and governments throughout history, we have woven such a tangled we of meaningless laws and regulations, that we are now slaves to a government in decline.
Reblogged this on truemajority and commented:
Great BIG kudos the Anthony Watts; Please goto his blog @ur momisugly WUWT and become as informed as I have.
It’s pretty much a crime that the Forest Service would let a asset like this sit around. Obama was out here in Colorado hugging people but never lifted a finger to get any of the large tankers under contract. There is also a tanker based on a DC-10 that doesn’t have a contract.
One other thing, the company that makes the water bomber pallet for the C-130 is apparently bankrupt so you won’t see any more C-130 tankers than we already have. Ironically they went bankrupt because the government took so long to certify the installation.
It looks like it looks like ,where did we see this before ? The BP oil problem. On whose watch did that happen.?
The perfect exposé that should be at the top of Drudge … I left them a link … now let’s see if they offer it.
I suppose opposing spending OPM (Other People’s Money, and collected on the threat of IRS jail-time) on pet social causes is the reason some cite to think that way … but, I’m curious, Pamela, can you give a specific example of made you think of him that way ?
.
Yes, another environazi environmental disaster caused by trust in Big Government.
It just so happens that this week’s Westword (weekly in-depth free news in Denver) has an article on the Pine Bark Beetle. There is good science to the effect this critter is 2000 feet higher in elevations than it has ever been in the Holocene before, and is producing two generations per summer, also new. I
Instead of blaming forest mismanagement, we get the global warming claptrap. The warming is too trivial to cause such a dramatic effect, the beetles are changing from Colorado to Canada. One can find out plenty more about forest mismanagement from Iain Murray’s “The Really Inconvenient Truths.” This refusal to search for actual causes threatens all the US’s and worldwide forests.
Here is another stupid rule enacted (don’t know federally or locally). After the 1996 Buffalo Creek forest fire (also in Colorado), the governor cannot activate the National Guard to help in a forest fire situation until “all commercial options have been exahuasted”. Why??? Because the Colorado Army National Guard costs significantly less AND the small business’s can’t make money fighting fires when the National Guard is involved. Don’t know why a business is allowed to make a profit on the hardship of others. Since this is a family friendly site, I won’t share my feelings beyond FACEPALM!
Look, maybe I’m starting to go a bit tin-hat on the subject of fire. But what explains the odd indifference to this massive source of atmospheric carbon, from the very people who preach loudest about “carbon pollution”? Warmists here in Oz are cool on mitigating bushfire, they don’t like to calculate its “footprint” and they don’t even like to talk about it.
Our climate changed – in 2007, to be exact – though some did not notice, or pretended not to notice. Eastern Australia has undergone massive regrowth, with oceanic winds dominant and abundant rains coinciding with reduced clearing, forestry and development.
When climate changes again, maybe when the PDO flips back, and westerlies dominate in late-winter/spring, as in the nineties, all that regrowth will be exposed to fire on a national scale.
It won’t be a new thing, but it’s a hoot to think that when the conflagrations are threatening or occurring, there will be bureaucrats and boffins advising on the carbon emissions from different brands of fire-pumps.
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)
Maybe the planes engines would contribute to AGW
“In Colorado wildfires, ‘worst in state history’, why won’t the Forest Service use the biggest firefighting tool available?”
Well, one thing the US Forest Service and the present US administration can’t say:
. . “We’re doing everything possible …”
… if they haven’t given Evergreen International a call and made use of this fire-fighting water-delivery asset …
.
Evergreen, you have the (very fine!) tanker plane, we in the UK have plenty of spare water …the US Gov has, err, an agenda?
The only 747 that Obama gives a real workout is Air Force One flying back and forth across the country to fundraisers.
A truly amazing private enterprise capability. I expect the real rason is somethoing to do with political donations. And, to the questioner “where is Obama” .. his minions will be in Paris on Jul 4th for a massive election fundraiser….dunno how he will be able to avoid foreign intervention in his electoral campaign.
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.
When all of the facts come out about the federal response to the oil spill, this will no longer be a mystery.
Very simple answer to why Colorado is allowed to burn.
It’s a red state.
Just like Gibson Guitars being raided, but not Martin.
Anybody know if Evergreen is unionized or willing to always pay Davis-bacon wages?