via OZBUSDRIVER #103:
Witwiw, granted, my opinion re-actual burns down the surf coast is not based on first hand experience as yours. However, as you say, the intensity of the fire and the fact it was crowning. A fire will not crown without the intensity of a ground fire to sustain it. No fuel load, no crown fire!
I suppose I am causing a divergence from aerial fire fighting....
Hardly a divergence. An understanding of the causation can best decide what air assets are required for the control.
I would suggest that a properly maintained burn-off regime would only need the local agy fixed wing and rotary operators as the back-up air capability of the fire services.
The current greeny caused clustafeck in WA was easily foreseen as a megafluck about to happen that would need heavy lifters to fight.
Jo Nova has compiled some background to the current fires...
From 2014:
"THE horrifying scale of the bushfire threat faced by West Australians is made clear by this map exposing the amount of old vegetation across the state.
The map reveals the build-up of fuel - combustible trees, shrub and ground litter - aged over seven years near Perth and in the South-West.
This is the age it becomes almost impossible to control on even average summer conditions - let alone catastrophic days with soaring temperatures and fast winds.
Rising fuel ages and a failure to hit prescribed burn targets means bushfire is WA's "pre-eminent hazard", according to the State Emergency Management Committee..."
Continues with map and article:
Yarloop fire: History repeats ? in 1961, a 41 day inferno destroyed 160 buildings and burned a larger area in South-West WA « JoNova
.