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3DHS / more "government efficiency"
« on: July 29, 2008, 08:29:06 PM »
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-wildfires29-2008jul29,0,1425971,full.story
Aren't you glad the politicians care about us so much?
| Hunter says he has no regrets about his end run around the chain of command. "California was on fire, I got 'em the planes," he said in a recent interview. "That's my job." To professional firefighters, though, it was a prime example of a "political air show," the high-profile use of expensive aircraft to appease elected officials. Fire commanders say they are often pressured to order planes and helicopters into action on major fires even when the aircraft won't do any good. Such pressure has resulted in needless and costly air operations, experienced fire managers said in interviews. The reason for the interference, they say, is that aerial drops of water and retardant make good television. They're a highly visible way for political leaders to show they're doing everything possible to quell a wildfire, even if it entails overriding the judgment of incident commanders on the ground. Firefighters have developed their own vernacular for such spectacles. They call them "CNN drops." [...] Pressure to use aircraft has grown as wildfires have become larger and more dangerous, and as more subdivisions have sprung up in fire-prone canyons and woodlands. When a column of smoke appears in the distance, frightened homeowners want dramatic action, and an air tanker pouring red retardant on a blazing ridgeline is undeniably dramatic. As a result, Americans have become conditioned to think officials aren't taking a fire seriously until they unleash a ferocious aerial attack. "If there's a fire and there's not an air tanker circling in California, people go, 'Oh my God, we're defenseless,' when in fact we're probably not," said Scott Vail, a retired Forest Service incident commander. [...] Hunter, who makes no secret of his impatience with the Forest Service bureaucracy, has pushed legislation to speed the process for mobilizing military planes during wildfires. He suggested that fire managers are slow to request military aircraft because they want to give business to private contractors. Incident commanders say they're reluctant for different reasons: The big military tankers cost a lot and often aren't effective. L. Dean Clark was fire management officer at the Chiricahua National Monument in southeast Arizona when the 1994 Rattlesnake fire broke out in the Chiricahua Mountains. Clark recalled standing with a group of ranchers as they watched C-130s release clouds of retardant high above steep canyons and rugged pine forests. "It was a pointless exercise in humidity-raising," said Clark, now retired. "They couldn't get in close enough to do much good. The feds needed to be showing the citizens they were doing everything they could to put out the fire. . . . It was a laughable example of a waste of federal money." Long before it reached the ground, the retardant had dissipated into a mist. |
Aren't you glad the politicians care about us so much?