On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 9:35 PM, Andrew Lentvorski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Legatus wrote: > > > > I work with the NWCG, and they are quite aware of the value, and lack of > > value to water drops. They also know the value of keeping the politicos > out > > of their business. Water drops keep the politicians and public happy with > > the efforts. They don't hesitate to shift these resources to a place that > > the water drops would be helpful, when it is appropriate. The pilots are > not > > naive about their role and when it is effective, and when it is not. > > Basically they will deliver water drops constantly, because if they don't, > > then they have to deal with the political and PR fallout. When there is a > > useful place for the drops, then that is where they will happen. There > is > > also constant experimentation with chemical fire suppressors that may > > increase the effectiveness of air drops by large margins. > > > > My expectation was that the water drops were actually more useful in > targeted situations (small flareups that threaten to restart, saturating > areas to prevent the fire from moving toward your ground staff, etc.), but > that you had to be "en route" already to be useful in those situations. > > I don't expect that air firefighting is useful in stalling the general > conflagration. In fact, about the only thing that I presume is truly useful > for fighting these fires is actually bulldozing a firebreak and patrolling > it. Everything else has fairly minimal impact. > > -a
I still do not know what NWCG is. I could Google but I find it irritating that someone who lives in the bureaucracy (apparently) just naturally assumes we should know what the acronym means. What is NWCG? Do they do something? Anything? Who pays for it? Why? Legatus, are you an employee of this NWCG or some other sort of "work with"it? Does NWCG do something we should admire? Why? TIA, BobLQ PS. I am still waiting for anyone to address the point I made earlier. Fires are easily extinguished if they are detected early before they grow to be huge conflagrations. There is existing technology for detecting fires within minutes of their initiation. SoCal is not using it. Why? I wish you guys would say, "Hey Bob, you are an idiot." Instead you ignore any attack on the fundamental problem and simply get into the political bureaucratic circus that follows ... Lemmings, lemmings, more damn lemmings. Increasingly I wonder why I spend any time here. Once I though this was a group capable of thought. Even occasionally capable of innovative thought. Increasingly I realize that all I am doing is wasting time here. Sigh, BobLQ -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
