On 5/6/2008 11:26 AM, Legatus wrote:
On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 1:13 PM, David Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Tue, May 06, 2008 at 11:27:05AM -0500, Legatus wrote:
You know air water drops as a means of fire suppression is not generally
effective. They are often used simply as a very expensive (sometimes at
the
cost of pilots life) PR method. People think that is what they should
see,
so that is what they are given. Not to say that they don't have a place,
just that most of the time, they are for show, while all the real
firefighting still happens on the ground.
They sure looked effective at last weekends brush fire in Sorrento Valley.
While the ground firefighters were struggling just to get up the side of
the hill to where the fire even was, the helicopters seemed to manage to
get most of it out.
Although I agree that they looked extremely dangerous for the pilots.
Brush and Timber fires are different beasts. My comments should be
considered in relationship to timber fires.
If a brush fire is really running you can't get enough retardant/water
onto the head of it fast enough to do much good. When it's spotting 1/4
mile ahead, about all you can do is get people out and watch. Sure, make
drops for the PR benefit. At that stage the air support is usually used
to pre-treat ahead of (structures|ridges|roads) and knock the heat out
of the flanks of the fire so (dozers|hand crews|engine crews) can build
line. It's only when the spread slows that air drops are effective at
the head of the fire.
If by that time the fire is big it's likely that there aren't enough
resources to properly attack it due to 1) spread too thin over miles of
fire line, or 2) other fires in the region sucking resources.
Karl
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