Stan,
I refer to a very common...."Father Knows best attitude" prevalent amongst the police agency/fire agency organizations in our country. We also have to remember the "political" aspects of all of this. As I said before twice now, I am of the opinion the SO is guilty of ignoring available assets "before" the event. I can understand to a point why they did what they did while the event was on-going....don't agree mind you....but still give them some leeway.
In the state of California, helicopters have become a part of a very great many fire departments and are almost invariably owned and operated by the county as a public use aircraft. The private sector is quite capable of providing those assets at a cheaper rate than the political units. The public owned aircraft in turn compete with the private sector for that kind of business which harms the private helicopter sector.
Consider the USFS and OAS use of contractor aircraft....so far it is mandated by law, just the opposite of what is happening with the States and County governments. The only reason private sector aircraft, pilots, and maintenance support staff are not used is the fact the public operations are paid for by Tax Money....and do not have to be operated in a cost effiecent manner.
An unusual indicator of the difference between the two concepts....in the State of Oregon, where state law requires public owned aircraft to operate to regular FAA Standards and not just to Public Use Standards....there are no state owned aircraft. They are all leased from private sector contractors.
Thus I suggest the private sector provides better equipment at a lower cost than do government run operations using taxpayer money dollar for dollar.