SN3 wrote.
Quote:
I completly agree with everything you said except for the statement that water not effective. From what I understand Tankers put a line around (to contain) or accross (to direct) a fire. Then the Helos and the Scoopers come in and basically increase the relative humidity in the fire environment by dropping on or near the fire. Once the fire has backed off enough the ground crews go in and put it out.
The larger air tankers are the weapon that we are missing here in Australia.
Please correct me if I am wrong
Fire isn't fought that way, and tankers don't work that way. Air assets don't fight fire. Ground troops do.
Sorry it took so long to get back to ya. Have you done much work with water bombers (scoopers). I asked a friend of mine, he is the chief pilot for one of the 215 outfits in Canada. I was told that what I said was pretty much exactly how they fight fires. They use tankers to direct where they want a fire to go then they get a 3 or 4 groups of scoopers, with 2 to 4 aircraft to a group, to attack the fire and to try and decrease its intensity. If there is 6 to 16 water bombers working on a fire for two, four hour shifts a day it does help considering in this time they can drop up to 90 times per day each, when the water source is close.
The water bombers also do other jobs like help control back burns as well as saturate fire breaks. If this is an ineffective way of fighting fires someone better tell the Canadians, and the French, and the Italians, and the Greeks and the Turks, etc. I do know that they never really got going in America because they weren't made in the USA, and therefore found ineffective, but that does not mean that they do not work.
You are right about the ground troops though. They are the ones that actually put out the fire. It is boots on the ground that does the hard work. I did, however, actually say that when I first posted.
Thanks for smack in the face. Waiting for another one.
DW
