SoCal Burns

[westkoast]

Regarding Qualcomm, my understanding is the stadium has to be evacuated on Friday whether or not the Chargers play there this weekend.

Good thing everyone's doing fine.  Was this forest fires that went out of hand or arson?

We ran a package on our 10:00 PM news that said FBI investigators believe one of the fires was set intentionally.  I would assume it's the one 'koast mentioned.

I don't believe arson is suspected as being the cause of the others.

As far as I know it is just that one fire that was close to me.  Actually was back in the area I went to elementary school in.  The other ones were accidents.  One was started by a welding torch from a construction yard.  Forget the others.

It wasn't a forest fire as we don't really have any forest in the whole area except for the San Bernadino Forest.  Mainly it was a lot of brush on hills that was burning.  It was SUPER dry this year and this was all expected yet they still had so much trouble with it.  One of the problems is typical political BS where 6 planes that could have SERIOUSLY helped, were grounded due to some BURROcrat nonsense.

[Laker Fan]

I used to work for Monsanto as a ground operations technician and transportation specialist for the Phos-chek Wildfire division, Phos-chek is the red retardant used to combat forest fires. Basically I drove the big mixer tank we used to produce the retardant in liquid form as it comes in powder initially and must be mixed with a local water source, I ran the mixer and we pumped the stuff into big Chinook and Sikorsky helicopters, as well as seaplanes and land based aircraft, we also filled portable pools with it so smaller Bell's could dip suspended dump tanks into them without having to land.

I have ALOT of experience with this type of situation and space here simply doesn't allow me to list all the fires I was involved in, by far the biggest being Yellowstone in 1988.

When you talk about aircraft being grounded due to red tape, there is no doubt SOMETIMES it happens, but there is no state in the U.S. more prepared or efficient at fighting wildfires than California, none even close, Monsanto's U.S. Wildfire division is based in SoCal and work hand in glove with firefighters, the problem in SoCal with these fires isn't red tape, it is weather my friends. All aircraft, regardless of size, become restricted by ambient air temperature as to how much weight they can carry, the hotter it gets, the less they can carry. Add to that the fact that fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft carry tanks that CANNOT be baffled due to the rapid dump requirement of air dropped liquids used to fight fires. As a consequence, slosh factors must be calculated in and this is where the Santa Ana winds become a huge factor, the buffeting of 100 mph winds may not affect aircraft with dry loads but unbaffled liquid loads in those conditions can literally break an airframe in half, more aircraft have been lost to airframe failure in fighting wildfire that all other causes combined. When the USDF and the FAA?s wildfire regulatory arm say it is unsafe to put an aircraft in the air, they mean it, and when you have Santa Ana winds accelerating to 100 mph down those canyons, increasing in their heat factors due to the fires, and the fires themselves creating the own weather patterns, you get a plane in those vortexes and it is 50 times more dangerous than normal flying. You can fly a plane into a hurricane with less risk because of the combination of heat, wind, and a load that is CONSTANTLY shifting a water dropper must face. Unfortunately, those conditions are ALWAYS present in a SoCal wildfire because of geography, climate, and time of year they typically happen

Given all those factors, the USDF and all related agencies are IMHO doing a MAGNIFICENT job, there is simply no better way to fight them once they break out. If you want to place blame, place blame on the bloody environmentalist who won?t let controlled or natural burns happen lest some poor microscopic endangered cricket is harmed. Wildfires are natural and necessary my friends, Lodge pole Pine seeds will not germinate unless subject to the intense heat of a wildfire, as a result Yellowstone was dying from 100 years of fire prevention when the fires broke out in 1988, now it is the most resurgent natural wilderness in the world.

Just my 2 cents.

[WayOutWest]

I hear what you're saying Dan, I've read a few articles that touched on what you posted.  The problem I have is that help was not even asked for or linned up.  It's better to have something and not need it than to need something and not have it.  From what I've read we did not have the option to put equipment into use because of "red tape".  If we had all the equipment at our disposal but it was not used because of safety factors that's fine but we didn't even have stuff available because of poor management and preperation.

[Reality]

High winds did not last all 5 days after fire.  2 helicopters were up like 24 hours later.  Yet 8+ sat on the ground due to bureaucrap.  Marines have said repeatedly the copters were good to go, CalFire did not want or even ask for them.

As to "hindsight being 20/20", major b.s.  S.D. just had the 2003 wildfires whereupon all these issues, most notably the copter use were to have been worked out.  And yet you people keep voting for humans every 4 years.

LFD agreed on the natural burn process. 

[Laker Fan]

I have read the same things you read WOW, here is my problem with that reporting, there were something like 90+ aircraft, both fixed and rotary wing, available and ready to fly, the intense heat and severe winds made those flights impossible. In fact, the San Diego complexes had such extreme temperatures over any possible drop zones that aircraft would be able to carry less than 25% liquid capacity, if that is water instead of retardant, suspended evaporation is about 50% making the drop an absolute waste of time and effort, you need large rapid dump volume to keep evaporation levels at a minimum and wind scatter and over drop heat in San Diego have been some of the worst ever measured for grassland fires.

I think the exchange between the governor and Shipman is a classic microcosm of what the media is trying to spin as lackluster effort by agencies that have been downright heroic in the face of this disaster. This isn't Katrina and if those planes could fly they would, the media wants to blame someone, and their agenda is all too apparent, they want to divert attention from the real culprits, "environmentalists", who have pushed their uneducated and absolutely wrong agenda's and ignorant BLM and USDF policies that allowed years of dead fuel accumulation to create a disaster that was inevitable. The lessons of Yellowstone have not been learned by these fools and now 1,800+ plus families are paying the price. Those homeowners who lost their homes because they did not clear brush as prescribed BY LAW in some areas are at least partly responsible for their own loss, although once you reach a self generating weather firestorm level, all the brush clearing in the world won't prevent the houses burning down. San Diego has been particularly notable for its response to this disaster, very quick and efficient, 300 buses didn?t sit under water because a completely inept government wouldn't mobilize, people didn't die en masse because no one forced evacuations, nobody is sitting around crying woe is me the big bad government won't come and give me a hand out, they took the bull by the horns and have done an admirable job in keeping it from getting much worse, and they didn't have days and days of warning about these fires coming like New Orleans and its moronic mayor did either.

The USDF and BLM deserves some heat for their policies, but it is the Sierra Club and suchlike organizations that are so shortsighted and stupid that they force, by lawsuits and lobbying efforts, the USDF and BLM to adopt such policies because if they had their way animals and insects would always trump humans. Responsible controlled burns and managed lightning strike natural burns would have averted this situation because even the arson set fires would not have been able to sustain their burn rates without the fuel the Sierra Club forces the government to leave alone. These aforementioned enviro-nuts have spent tens of millions in California, Montana, Idaho and Utah to prevent sound environmental management.

Native Americans (you know, those of us who were here first) ALWAYS used burn methods to good effect, to restore fertility to the soil, to clear overgrowth, to regenerate usable tree?s and other types of plant life, and to replenish fodder for game animals. The universally accepted methods by real, trained environmental scientists closely resemble the methods used by Indians for centuries prior to the conquest of the Americas.

It just really irritates me when the media try to put a negative spin on everything, I know firefighters, I worked with USDF and BLM people for a long time and those that recognize how it SHOULD be done, and those who jump straight into the firestorm to save lives and homes are nothing less than heroic, and for Shipman to try to compare this situation to Katrina and the media's efforts to place blame where it does not belong is despicable., believe me WOW, with VERY VERY FEW EXCEPTIONS, if those planes could have flown at the height of the wind fed firestorm those smoke pilots would have been up there, I have known too many of them to doubt that. Most of them were probably trying to talk the weather analysts into letting them go anyway, those guys are nuts to begin with, you have to be to do what they do.

[westkoast]

Laker Fan...I am not very knowledgeable about all of what goes on behind the scenes but they did do a news report about it.  The reason for them staying on the ground was not the winds but over a 'fire spotter' not being available for all of the air craft.  Someone correct me if I am wrong.

[Reality]

Laker Fan...I am not very knowledgeable about all of what goes on behind the scenes but they did do a news report about it.  The reason for them staying on the ground was not the winds but over a 'fire spotter' not being available for all of the air craft.  Someone correct me if I am wrong.

  Yes.  BeauroBabble and legalbabble over who would be responsible if copter went down and spotter and pilot passed was part of it.  Of course those arrangements could not have been worked out in the last 4 years.

LFD the firefighters efforts in doing all they could are superhero level in my book.  Our lament is not about them but the handcuffs put on them such as above.  Also the Martin Mars Shaq waterdumper being held at the border for 48+.

Anyone see the fake news conference put on by FEMA?  Where they only gave the media 15 minutes notice, of course no major media showed up which is what they wanted.  Subsequently had their own staffers pose as media people.  Lobbed softball questions to the FEMA directors.

[Laker Fan]

I heard that too Koast but again, I believe it is to some extent media spin.

There are several ways they determine need when it comes to drops. First and foremost is human life danger, such as trapped smoke jumpers; property danger, (you should have seen the effort to save Yellowstone Lodge in '88, UNBELIEVABLE); manageable cordons for containment; hot spot re-ignition danger, and others. All are done based on air and ground coordination, ground makes a determination, air confirms. Spotters in urban environments, such as existed in San Diego, are not as integral to the mission primarily because blanket coverage of a given neighborhood is relatively straightforward, drop the product on the houses if burning or drop on and in front of advancing flames.

In a wilderness setting, spotters are employed to determine fire path potential and preventative layering if using retardant. Contrary to popular belief, retardant is seldom if ever dropped on structures or directly on the flames, once brush, trees, or structures are fully engulfed, there is little if anything you can do to quench the flames, the heat is too intense, the goal is to slow or prevent the fires advance by denying it fresh fuel in the wind path, as I have said, fires create their own wind and weather patterns, hence the term firestorm. This is where Phos-chek is so vital to the effort, it is a retardant, and even after evaporation of the water it is mixed with, it coats the surface with an unburnable layer thus denying fuel to the flames. Water drops, on the other hand, have the disadvantage of high and rapid evaporation factors that make them useful mostly on structures and on hotspots more than in encircling missions.

 Interestingly, at Yellowstone and Happy Camp in NoCal, the Sierra Club did their best to prevent the extensive use of Phos-chek because it was (you won't believe this) leaving ugly red stains on the trees! To some extent they won the day, especially at Happy Camp and we were forced to use it in areas where it could easily be washed away, we had a powder spill at Yellowstone that halted loading procedures until we cleaned it up! And the stinking Sierra Club reps were on hand to check our work! As if that isn't bad enough, if you know anything about Monsanto, you would know that Phos-chek is derived from their primary product, a fertilizer they discovered had natural fire retardant properties and Phos-chek itself is a very good fertilizer and absorbs very quickly into the soil, yet the Sierra Club, while nearly 600,000 acres were being turned to charcoal were concerned that the red stain it left behind was ruining the natural beauty of the land!

[Reality]

http://sandiego.cox.net/cci/newsnational/national?_mode=view&_state=maximized&view=article&id=D8SJIK480&_action=validatearticle
By MICHAEL R. BLOOD, Associated Press Writer

LOS ANGELES (Associated Press) --  Three years ago, a state-appointed panel said finding ways to quickly get military helicopters and planes airborne to battle raging wildfires should be a "high priority." Yet, last week, delays launching aircraft revealed a system still suffering from communication and planning shortfalls.

The Governor's Blue Ribbon Fire Commission, formed after 2003 fires destroyed more than 3,600 homes, urged the state to "clarify and improve" policies and regulations for using military aircraft in firefighting. The report also recommended a host of other changes, including buying new helicopters and fire engines.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said as early as September 2004 that his administration was working with the federal government to ensure that plans to use military helicopters and airplanes were "efficient and effective." However, when the latest fires grew out of control on Oct. 21, not all available military aircraft were quickly pressed into service.

The Associated Press reported last week that Marine, Navy and National Guard helicopters were grounded because state personnel required to be on board weren't immediately available. And the National Guard's two newest C-130 cargo planes couldn't help because they've yet to be outfitted with tanks needed to carry thousands of gallons of fire retardant.

"It's very troubling that something that was identified as a high priority doesn't appear to me to have been treated with the urgency and respect that it deserved," said Assemblyman Pedro Nava, a Santa Barbara Democrat who heads the Joint Legislative Committee on Emergency Services and Homeland Security. He has promised hearings on the state's response to the fires.

Military aircraft are called in to supplement state and local fire resources as needed. That was the case last week when more than a dozen fires exploded amid fierce Santa Ana winds that fanned the flames. The fires devoured more than a half-million acres and destroyed more than 2,000 homes.

On Saturday, state and federal officials blamed each other for delays getting water-dropping helicopters off the ground. The head of the state's firefighting agency said the military failed to commit to training needed to launch helicopters quickly, and that the Forest Service neglected to provide enough "fire spotters," or helicopter managers.

After insisting for days that the harsh winds kept helicopters from getting airborne more quickly, Schwarzenegger said Saturday that firefighting might have been more effective if more state spotters had been available sooner.

State rules require each federal helicopter to carry a spotter to help coordinate water or retardant drops.

U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-San Diego, and other members of California's congressional delegation criticized the state for its handling of military helicopters in the fires' early days. Hunter said the state has created rules on spotters that it can't fulfill.

State agreements with the Navy and National Guard allow for state firefighting personnel to train with them. But there's still no agreement with the Marines, even though some of the worst fires were near the Marines' Camp Pendleton.

Mike Padilla, aviation chief for the state forestry department, said the Marines' responsibilities in the Iraq war prevented them from committing to train and provide resources.

Lt. Col. Chris Hughes, a Marines spokesman, did not return a phone call Monday.

U.S. Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who oversees the U.S. Forest Service, said Monday that the lack of a training agreement with the Marines as "probably something we need to look into." But he said there have been improvements since the governor's report.

[westkoast]

I heard that too Koast but again, I believe it is to some extent media spin.

There are several ways they determine need when it comes to drops. First and foremost is human life danger, such as trapped smoke jumpers; property danger, (you should have seen the effort to save Yellowstone Lodge in '88, UNBELIEVABLE); manageable cordons for containment; hot spot re-ignition danger, and others. All are done based on air and ground coordination, ground makes a determination, air confirms. Spotters in urban environments, such as existed in San Diego, are not as integral to the mission primarily because blanket coverage of a given neighborhood is relatively straightforward, drop the product on the houses if burning or drop on and in front of advancing flames.

In a wilderness setting, spotters are employed to determine fire path potential and preventative layering if using retardant. Contrary to popular belief, retardant is seldom if ever dropped on structures or directly on the flames, once brush, trees, or structures are fully engulfed, there is little if anything you can do to quench the flames, the heat is too intense, the goal is to slow or prevent the fires advance by denying it fresh fuel in the wind path, as I have said, fires create their own wind and weather patterns, hence the term firestorm. This is where Phos-chek is so vital to the effort, it is a retardant, and even after evaporation of the water it is mixed with, it coats the surface with an unburnable layer thus denying fuel to the flames. Water drops, on the other hand, have the disadvantage of high and rapid evaporation factors that make them useful mostly on structures and on hotspots more than in encircling missions.

 Interestingly, at Yellowstone and Happy Camp in NoCal, the Sierra Club did their best to prevent the extensive use of Phos-chek because it was (you won't believe this) leaving ugly red stains on the trees! To some extent they won the day, especially at Happy Camp and we were forced to use it in areas where it could easily be washed away, we had a powder spill at Yellowstone that halted loading procedures until we cleaned it up! And the stinking Sierra Club reps were on hand to check our work! As if that isn't bad enough, if you know anything about Monsanto, you would know that Phos-chek is derived from their primary product, a fertilizer they discovered had natural fire retardant properties and Phos-chek itself is a very good fertilizer and absorbs very quickly into the soil, yet the Sierra Club, while nearly 600,000 acres were being turned to charcoal were concerned that the red stain it left behind was ruining the natural beauty of the land!

Very interesting.  Appreciate the insight into a situation like this.  There is never any details and they never quite explain to you what the fire fighters and other crews do to try to battle these flames.  Everything is so vague and doesn't give them the full props they deserve.  It is more then just digging trenches and spraying water.  The coordination and all that is impressive.

The fire in Orange County really hit home for me as I know a lot of families that live in that canyon and it is like 2-3 miles from where I went to school when I was younger.