2012 Wildfire Season - Hundreds of homes lost

[corporatesteve]

The amount of money to maintain and keep that 747 legal to fly would be crazy. Also, the very large fuel cost alone would make me want to not support it. It also limits where it can land to, would require international airports...expect delays for that plane to ever get off in time. The amount of stress that airplane would go through at slow flight and carrying a large pressurized payload is just stupid. The c130 is more than capable. Waste of money and resources.

 

[Venom800tt]

The amount of money to maintain and keep that 747 legal to fly would be crazy. Also, the very large fuel cost alone would make me want to not support it. It also limits where it can land to, would require international airports...expect delays for that plane to ever get off in time. The amount of stress that airplane would go through at slow flight and carrying a large pressurized payload is just stupid. The c130 is more than capable. Waste of money and resources.

A 747 can land at a lot more airports than one would imagine. They are capable of operating out of airports with runway lengths as short as 8000 (there are LOTS of runways that size around). Not to mention a 747 has a cruise speed of nearly 600 mph, which means it can travel quite quickly.
As for airframe stress, those problems only occurred when the aircraft was attempted to be converted to drop retardant instead of pressurized water, as retardant is denser than regular water. 20,500 gallons of water is quite a bit below the max payload weight of a 747-200 that the tanker is based off of.
And while a 747 may cost more to operate than existing tankers, the sheer amount of water the aircraft can carry is massive, more than 6 times the amount of water a C-130 Hercules can carry. This means fewer trips would be required to do the same thing as a C-130. The 747 is also remarkably agile for an aircraft of its size, as shown by various airshow performances. Also the smaller DC-10 "Tanker 910" has proven its worth in California for several years now, playing a huge part in containing large wild fires. I believe there is a need for more super tankers like the DC-10 and 747 and would support such aircraft.

 

[hawkeye122]

There is now a large fire not more than 5 miles from my home. Pics to come soon.

The "Dale Fire" is now up to 1,200+ acres, and currently threatens 150 homes. If those homes get consumed, my house will then fall into the "Threatened" category.

http://www.redding.com/news/2012/jul/05/10-15-acre-vegetation-fire-reported-happy-valley/

Suggest we re-name this "The Fire Thread"?

 

[CodeRedR51]

Done.

 

[hawkeye122]

My city is now coming up on 2 consecutive weeks of being covered in a blanket of smoke. There have been so many fires in my area (And Big. More than 5,000 Acres each) I can't find a resource which talks about them all in a meaningful fashion.

http://www.redding.com/news/2012/aug/29/goff-fire-backs-down-in-siskiyou-county-fire-at/

This gives a good outline of them(The current ones). Im going to guestimate that more than 150,000 acres have burned within 50 miles of my home this season. Hotels are chock-full of firemen. Smoke is reducing visibility to about 2 miles. Everything sucks.

The Ponderosa fire was lit by Lightning last month, and then treated as a "Prescribed Burn" by the Lassen National Park Superintendent. Now we have a mostly contained fire, and a miserable-looking National Park. They had the ability to stop it early.
Fire resources were drawn from it as other fires started in the area.

I'm feeling quite horrible for the people in and around my county. Luckily, the closest fire to me was the one I posted above. It stopped within a week, and few homes were burned.

 

[Slash]

^^I've got family in Redding......

 

[Leonidae@MFT]

I can see the smoke from where I am.

 

[Patrick]

I can see the smoke from where I am.

So can I. I'm an hour from Riverside too!

700 acres four hours ago and it's at 3,600 now! Up in the San Gabriel Mountains. It was only a matter of time till a fire started here.

 

[Leonidae@MFT]

Yeah, it's been dry and hot summer.. I was sort of surprised that it took that long to start as soon as there's a long weekend.. I bet they've started accidentally by careless bbq handling or such..

 

[Patrick]

Who knows. The last huge fire we had was started by a car fire on the side of the 91 freeway.

 

[a6m5]

I can see the smoke from where I am.

So can I. I'm an hour from Riverside too!

Not from the Redding fire? You can't be serious?

 

[Patrick]

Not from the Redding fire? You can't be serious?

Totally serious. Up to 4,000 acres.

 

[a6m5]

Totally serious. Up to 4,000 acres.

By looking at google maps, you guys are east to L.A.? Fire is in Redding, which I think was NoCal? That's scary.

 

[hawkeye122]

They can't possibly see the Redding fires from there. They have their own fires, but they are substantially smaller.

The smoke is STILL making it rather annoying to breathe. Another round of fires started up south of here. It's getting a bit ridiculous.

Some of the fires are remote enough that the CDF are apparently not even going to bother, and are going to await the inevitable rain which will come in early October.
Hopefully I'll be able to find an article which talks about ALL of them.