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Investigative Report: 19 Firefighters Possibly Saved Had Air Tankers Responded
U.S. Forest Service tanker fleet down 75% from 44 tankers a decade ago to only 11 now. The 19 firefighters who died in the Yarnell wildfire in Arizona this summer might have survived had any of the six U.S. Forest Service air tankers requested by the state arrived on the scene, a senior fire official told ABC News. But only one plane, a Korean War vintage aircraft, was dispatched to help and it had to return to base because of engine problems. (abcnews.go.com) More...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
True that. Look how effective the two converted DC-10s have been at dumping huge amounts of retardant on fires in a single pass. I know, it costs money. But some of our desert boneyards are full of retired heavies - 10s, L1011s, 747s that could be had cheap to nearly free. We seem to have money for everything else, from extraneous wars to extraneous social programs. How about spending just a little to solve this. (Footnote: We Southern Californians feel a lot more threatened by 200,000 acre wildfires than we do by terrorists or undocumented aliens...and over the years, we've accumulated the thousands of chimneys where homes used to stand to prove it.)
Thanks for these links. Very informative.
With the Evergreen supertanker, there is little excuse to let US Forest Service tanker responsiveness drop so precipitously.
They should contract with Evergreen or build their own supertankers, with all the surplus 747s around and available cheaply.
With the Evergreen supertanker, there is little excuse to let US Forest Service tanker responsiveness drop so precipitously.
They should contract with Evergreen or build their own supertankers, with all the surplus 747s around and available cheaply.
Looks like for some politicians saving jobs comes before saving lives.
Let's send both houses of congress to go and fight the wildfires. Then we will see how fast the forest service gets their new tankers.
They might take a lesson from the Newfoundlanders that didn't go through "channels" when they needed on to put out the fire at the scene of a tanker truck crash shown here recently.
http://www.evergreenaviation.com/supertanker/faq.html
http://www.evergreenaviation.com/supertanker/
http://wildfiretoday.com/2010/12/03/evergreens-747-supertanker-deployed-to-fight-fires-in-israel/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvBRWTumoZI