Firefighting plane down in NSW

[Wunwing]

I'm surprised that by this length of thread the usual suspects haven't started the big aircraft don't work in Australia chant.Its happened everytime this subject has been mentioned.They then add that they have been trialed here and were no good and we have no water anyway.

To answer the latter first. To the best of my knowledge, we have trialed one Conair DC6B, 2 Conair CV580s and a DC10 at different times.All have been here after a bad fire season and had no real work to do in the next.In all cases there were not enough aircraft or crews to prove anything.From what I can see everyone else in the world uses these aircraft as an initial attack on fire startups as the PRIMARY function.The list of countries who use large aircraft is extensive, including many that we would class as 3rd world.

The other opinion that they dont work here is because "there is not enough water". In the recent fires there was the Richmond RAAF base and the Hawkesbury river and Warragamba Dam within the fire zone.There was certainly enough water for these fires.With the Picton area fires, there were 3dams withing the fire zone

I was on Hawkesbury Road Springwood only minutes after the fire started.At that stage it was not all that big and could have been knocked down or at least slowed by drops from a few large aircraft, say based at Richmond or even Bankstown.I watched as a lone helicopter with a bucket carried out what was obviously a futile task which may have saved individual properties but has no effect in the overall fire front.By that stage the whole of Springwood was in traffic gridlock and the emergency vehicles couldnt get through. I watched the buses tasked with evacuating the schools turn back because of the gridlock.Clearly one major benefit of large water drops is instant access when situations like this occur.

I was there again yesterday returning evacuated family members.There were at least 2, possibly more, Bell Longrangers running a shuttle from the Springwood Golf Course lake to a valley a short distance away. I was there for about 2 hours and they were doing about a 5 minute sequence each.I dont know the hourly operating cost of a Longranger but I suspect that 4 to 6hours of their operation would exceed dramatically a couple of drops from a CV 580.

Unfortunately I agree with other posters on this site. This argument is not about facts, its about politics at all 3 government levels. Unfortunately after this no one will be game to take of RFS because of there deserved hero status so the situation won't change.

Wunwing