Someone said that airplanes don’t put out fires. I disagree with this statement. l say that planes can put out fires if you have enough planes. When there are these huge fires, like down in California, you see an airplane fly over ever once in a while, and maybe a helicopter with this tiny little cup of water slung underneath dropping water. Well, this is not going to put out any huge fires. The Canadians build an airplane, it is called the Canadair CL-415 (superscooper or Bombardier 425 amphibian), this plane lands on lakes, scoops up a lot of water, then flies over the fires and drops the water. Now say you had a hundred of these planes flying in every thirty seconds dropping water 24 hours a day, could not this put out the fires? I say yes. So what in the world are the firefighters waiting on for crying out loud! Let’s buy these planes and put out the fires! Yes I know, they cost a lot of money, you would have to have stand by crews, but wouldn’t it be worth it?
Seems to happen too often.
I wonder why.
I’m no expert, but I’d imagine that planes can help fight fires - but water is very heavy and the amount of water needed to fight a big fire has to be an enormous amount, more than constant bombing runs can even do. In remote areas it’s probably essential, but here is a quick summary:
a CL-415 can scoop up 1,620 gallons of water. It probably takes an hour to scoop up the water and fly and dump the load.
So, if you dump a load every thirty seconds, you’d need a fleet of about 3,000 planes. Wiki says that one of those planes costs $35 million, so the fleet would cost $105 billion, not counting labor and maintenance.
That’s why you don’t see them cluttering up the sky in a fire, probably a good thing because they’d be crashing into each other.
Why is it that rain puts out fires? Because water puts out fires! I say that 3,000 planes can put out fires. Here is the choice: these fires will turn California into a desert, and that is why we don’t want to spend the money on the equipment that will put out the fires? And no I do not believe these planes will be crashing into each other, some might. If these fires are not put out in a hurry you kiss California good by.
In Australia trees are a species of eucalyptus or gum trees.
It contains a lot of oil and when the tree goes up in flames, it releases a lot of oil in mist and it can ignite in the air.
I think pine trees in America and Canada can work the same way.
Commiefornia has Eucalyptus trees too
Fires, like with anything, should be dealt with caution and prevention. When you’re fighting it, it’s already too late, and control burn is the best option. And yes, Gov. Moonbeam vetoed it the prevention bill. To dems, they want more control in the state government (reads: more funding) instead of delegating that power and responsibility to the local government to fire-proof their electrical equipment and assets.
And also on the grand scheme, Obama and his activist EPA enacted strict no-logging rules without extensive “environmental impact studies”, and thus overgrown and dry bushes pile up and become excellent fuel for that one stray sparks to ignite. Thanks Obama.
At least Trump is trying to undo some of that damage.
" The bark strips dropped by the blue gums are extremely flammable, which can lead to intense fires, such as the Oakland Firestorm of 1991."
Yes, eucalyptus trees can be dangerous when it comes to intense fires.
It’s oil is antiseptic and yet one should know how to use it.
Australian aborigines have lived with such plants for tens of thousands of years and seem to know how to use them properly.
Another thing about the Australian aborigines is that it is part of their annual ritual to make small, controlled fires which they call “cold fires.” In fact some Australian plants produce seeds which are encased in hard shells which can be broken only by fire.
Since the white governments down under banned the practice of “cold fires” despite the fact that they have been practiced for tens of thousands of years (which has archaeological proof), Australia has to deal with big fires every couple of years.
To save F-ed up liberal Californicate ? HELL NO !!!
Poor California, 125 sq miles of Colorado are on fire as of today.
No big deal, the weather will soon change and mother nature as always will put them out. Fire fighting may save buildings but in the mountains aircraft, people rarely put out fires unless they are small.
Planes have been buzzing low overhead since last night. I think that they’re dropping water on a fire not far from me, but it’s the far side of Mount Diablo, not worrisome for me
I’m not an aviation specialist, but I watched a helicopter dump water on a bush fire.
I suppose the aircraft has to fly very, very low for that purpose (That’s where the risk is for the pilot and aircraft), because otherwise the water become like rain, literally, and not effective to put out any fire.
Earth to Radicalrants, we wrote off Californication quite a while back.
Who would pay for the aircraft, the crews, maintenance,
OK, here is my idea, buy 100 planes, and just as soon as a fire is starting up rush those planes out there to put out the fire. The trouble is we can’t get enough fire fighting equipment there quick enough to put out those fires which are just starting up, but the planes can get there, so I am still in favor of planes. We can afford to buy the planes because the fires are destroying billions of dollars of everything.