How about a modern fire fighting force ?

[Deschodt]

Ok, this is what gets me... This is the 21st century, we're going back to the moon, mars, we have stealth planes, and we cannot effectively fight a fire such as what is destroying lake Tahoe now, or Georgia/Florida last month or so....

How about (humor me here) taking an infinitesimal portion of the air force, navy and Army budget and build a specific "military grade" fire fighting squadron? Imagine a few AWACs style air controller planes flying high above the blaze out of the way - using thermal stuff instead of radar - pinpointing the advance of the fire to the meter and being able to act as air controllers for the traffic below, dispatching modern "fire bombers" with pinpoint accuracy to stop the fire in its tracks. Flying closer to the ground, we're talking military grade pilots trained to fly blind thru smoke and fire with modern flying aids so as not to eat a mountain, able to drop their load with the accuracy of laser guided bombs...

While we're at it, some advancement in fire retardant or other anti-fire "weapons" could be achieved with 1/10 of the effort we put into stealth technology (kill fire, ugh..) Maybe some of those oxygen sucking bombs used in double punch with some fire retardants, dunno... I'm talking about a modern fleet of Jet fire bombers with more carrying capacity and delivery precision, modern helicopters for the surgical strikes, all able to fly through the fire zone safely under coordination from above.... Such a force could be dispatched cross country within hours (jets, remember?), and maybe, if we had some more of those special awacs always patrolling the country, they could find and kill some of those fires before they do get huge (either by informing local firefighters for small ones, or calling the cavalry for bigger ones) !!! What a concept ! ;-)

All for the price of an F22 squadron ( I love them, but there aren't that many Tupolevs to intercept or Sukhois to do air combat with)... So how about it ? Military grade effective kick ass firefighting, instead of (Ok, keep the F22s) a base in Germany or Japan !!! Some more "valuable to us" spending of our resources and tax dollars... ???

[URY914]

I with you on this, I have always thought we needed a quick reaction force for natural disasters. Military style training with equipment at the ready. There would be different divisions to handle different situations. But nobody from Washington has called to discuss with me.

[The Gaijin]

Hurricanes happen. Forrests burn. That is the way it is, has always been and always will be. People should plan around such natural "disasters".

[charleskieffner]

san jose mercury news..........DC-10 while delivering 12000 gallons to "white fire"(kern cty,kalif.) was sucked down into trees on final drop. pilots applied full AB power. bottom of fuselage damaged. ie. read that as they were flying thru tree line. full power allowed lift, and returned to airport. pilots cleaned major POO POO from pants.

status of plane............GROUNDED until full structural inspection and coniferous debris removed from bottom of planes sheetmetal.

so much for turbine delivered slurry this year!

tahoe is screwed today. red flag warning!

spent lots of time there. nev./calif/ sides. fire burning n by ne. if it gets on top w/winds today............its gonna be real bad.

thanks once again to the tree huggers.

will not be surprised if some are run out on a rail on this one!

can you count how many homes including my friends have 200ft of defensible space around their homes??????

not very many!


today is a huge day in tahoes history!

[widebody911]

>thanks once again to the tree huggers.

I'm dying to hear how you can blame this on the tree huggers

For the record, I fought fires for the USFS for 2 years and for CDF for 5

[KFC911]

Originally posted by Deschodt
Ok, this is what gets me... This is the 21st century, we're going back to the moon, mars, we have stealth planes, and we cannot effectively fight a fire such as what is destroying lake Tahoe now, or Georgia/Florida last month or so....

I bet Mother Nature was smiling when she read this...man is no match for her

[charleskieffner]

thom we have been thru this before. i too fought fires when i was younger. also i was involved here w/the cave creek complex fire at the airport i work at.

i have a full understanding of fire science. i have also lost my aunt to a fire, my race car also burnt up in a fire.

as we both know the fire triangle, air/fuel/ignition.........tahoe has the fuel. add drought.........bark beetle........heat.........wind......and thick uncut forest = CROWNING FIRE!

i have spent mucho time in jeeps/dirt bikes and underwater diving at tahoe. i have literally been around the entire lake via trails up on top. the forest is so thick that riding dirt bikes is out of the question due to handlebar width in places.

if you got nbc news last night, one woman fought w/tree huggers on removing trees and duff from her property. to the point of being threatened w/jail! she cleared it anyway. her house was THE ONLY ONE TO NOT BURN!

tahoe has been under siege by tree huggers not allowing clearing. lassen has also been under microscope by tree huggers, as well as the entire state of kalif. and arizona/new mex/colo/utah/wy/idaho/wash/oregon.

and what do we get..........lawsuits by tree huggers that prevent clearing.

new mexico and az. get spotted owl closures. my g/friends step father is head of mogollon wildland fire dept.(gila wilderness).

my good porsche buddy runs larco water tenders on contract to USFS across the entire west coast.

only saw mill running in entire state of az. is running ONLY BECAUSE OF RODEO-CHEDESKI FIRE. and they are milling burnt lumber. not green trees.

the forest needs to be thinned............period.

pictures of flagstaff 125 yrs ago show normal forest. i think 40 trees per acre. now in 2007, something like 150 trees per acre.

now figure out whts gonna happen on a nice hot/low humidity/WINDY DAY!

i think today w/red flag warnings up will make or break the usfs efforts stopping fire.

spotting and uphill fire path to N and NE with 30 -40mph wimds is BAD JU JU!

now throw in lack of manpower/lack of equipment.

a slurry line and a dozer path is ALL THAT STOPS IT FROM RUNNING!

[Tobra]

The rules in Eldorado County are that you are to clear no more than 10 yards(30 feet) around your house, less environmental impact that way, on paper anyway. Saw an interview with a guy who had the only house standing in sight, he cleared 3 times the amount the county said he could. Probably will get fined for clearing too much brush, but at least he still has a kitchen and kitchen table where he can write the check.

Environmentalists don't want any trees, or even a single pine cone out of place. Small fires are stopped immediately, rather than burning the small stuff and sparing the big trees as nature seemingly intended. Underbrush gets overgrown, and when there is a fire, it has plenty fuel. That is how environmentalists impact this situation.

[charleskieffner]

if you go to usfs web site, they show 30 ft for dez fuels(which i have) and 200+(which my friend whose out of country doesnt at tahoe) feet for sloped terrain coniferous/oak/juniper fuels. he has pines right next to house..........STILL after i jumped his case years ago. this is as of yesterdays google satellite search of his pad there. told him in e-mail to get whomever he can NOW.........to get pines cut around house. any sawyer worth his salt can fell them away from house. told him in e-mail they may look like crap until cutup and hauled off, but its better than staring at a chimney and some ash!!!!!

now what comes back after crowning fires????


juniper and aspens.

[Overpaid Slacker]

Greg -
I think it's frankly the magnitude of these types of fire. Once they hit a critical mass point, with all the fuel, pre-heated and dried to a dangerous level, applying "full military force" to such a beast would be like trying to stop a hurricane with our navy.

Now, should there be more (and better) assistance for areas prone to wildland (or wildland/urban interface) fires? Sure. My experience has been that firefighters in the western US are better trained/prepared for wildland fires than firefighters in the East... both of my wildland instructors were trained out West (CO and CA).

This is, largely, a consequence of the fact that there are more such fires, and they can spread very very quickly out West. I will say, politics aside for the moment, that Charles' point about inability of landowners to remove duff/undergrowth has been cited as a major factor in the severity, duration and speed of several western wildfires during the last decade. Put simply, if there's more fuel around to burn, and especially if it's smaller, more easily combustible product, you're going to have a much more severe fire... all that "small stuff" burning preheats the big stuff to combust.

Roaming around the Adirondacks, I can tell you that it's ready to go up. One lighting-strike in late July after a period of 2 weeks of heat and no rain, and we could have a whole lot of the state of New York ablaze. No shyt. It's just a matter of time.

And, Charles, it's a fire tetrahedron now, old man!

JP

[widgeon13]

Good point w/ the idea of fighting fires unfortunately the environmentalists do not want the fires controlled for the most part, they are willing to let the fire burn wherever it goes as long as it's not in their back yard. And it's not limited to fires, blow down from microbursts is another problem but as long as the trees are on forest property (wilderness) no one can touch them.

I have a home in the Adirondack Park of upstate NY and just try to do something the Adirondack Park Agency has control over, it will be the last time you mess with them.

Trees will grow back, they are a renewable resource but people will not. I am all for some degree of control and policy but the APA takes it to the extreme.

As an EMT we can't even take ATV's on state property w/o permission when conducting rescues. They also intentionally do not cut paths wide enough for this very reason. We can's put cell towers (to proper height) for communication. We can't land float planes in most of the lakes in the park.

Don't get me going on this subject. People die up here before the APA will change the rules. The head of the APA does not even live in the park, most of the commissioners are from down state.

[charleskieffner]

tetrahedron..............hmmmmm. i must be getting old. coming up here im thinking about getting my CDL(commercial drivers lic.) with "H" designation for haz mat and run a tender feeding crop dusters/helos/P-3's for larry at larco tenders inc. basic job is now haul slurry/usfs mixes it and then deposit via hose to aircraft. hell just about dont even care what it pays, at least im doing something positive for the forest.

dont know why? but i guess it may be a calling in my little head to do something fulfilling w/my life. larry stated he may need someone in oregon later this summer. take a few months off here and do it. its been crossing my mind alot. larry has a porsche also. hes based out of kingman, az.

right now in gila national forest/wilderness they have (5) fires going. active suppression is not being used. remote ones have helo overflights and about (5) guys on ground monitoring activity. they are allowing unburnt excessive fuels TO BURN! gila guys have basically said "screw you" to PETA(owl huggers), and the host of other clown lawsuit instigators, and have let it do as mutha nature intended. burn the duff and disallow crowning fires. and the gila is one damn thick forest just like tahoe national forest!

people out of the loop or unwise to fire science, do not have the remotest CLUE what today means to lake tahoe. winds from sw to n-ne going upslope, with 30-40mph winds is an uncontrolled freight train of destruction that only a freak downpour (which aint happening) can slow down.

i pray noone gets caught in this. already (2) guys had to deploy "shake and bakes"(fire shelters) yesterday and were lucky to walk away. june 26th a few years back was aniv. of "dude fire" which killed i think (7) firefighters. dude fire literally burnt up to the porch of g/friends family cabin im going to friday morning.

i hate forest fires! with a passion!