Quick Hit
In an Australian Broadcasting story, Animals not forgotten in Vic recovery effort, RSPCA [Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals] spokesman Ray Lord is interviewed:
He says it would have been extremely difficult for livestock to escape the fires.
“Basically a lot of those animals were trapped in the fires and that made it very difficult,” he said.
“A lot of the fences burned down and a lot of animals endeavoured to get out, but there were some reports that the fire travelled 20 kilometres in four minutes … and when a fire can travel 20 kilometres in four minutes, sadly it’s an absolute catastrophe.”
300 kilometers an hour! That’s better that 186 MPH! These fire events can generate their own weather, and they can create “microbursts”, super gusts of wind, especially in mountainous terrain, which makes flying them a real challenge. If the fires were moving at those speeds, even for brief intervals, there is no chance of getting to safety.
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Yep. There was no chance. The Californian pilot of ‘Elvis’ said he’s never seen anything like it and it wouldn’t have mattered how man water bombers we had. I made a comment about that and the wildlife here last night.
Many people have stated they had zero warning before the fire arrived at their homes. It just happened too fast to do anything.
I saw that and was going back to it before “life” intervened.
They were talking to a local fire chief in San Diego, California about the deadly Cedar fire of a few years ago and he said they now know that after the Santa Ana winds came up that fire was consuming 10 acres [4 hectares] every second.
There are plenty of pictures and video from that fire that showed how fast it was moving. Just based on the pictures posted for your fires, I would guess that things were 5 or 10 times worse for flame heights and speed than the Cedar fire.
…I was a bit surprised to find out about “Elvis”. Silly small town boy that I am, I never realized that Oregon’s Erickson helicopter folks had become an international fire-fighting operation. I remember watching that first orange SkyCrane flying over a fire on the west side of the Central Oregon Cascades 20 years ago and thinking “way cool, man”…
The fire spread numbers you’ve been talking about, Bryan, have been almost incomprehensible. Because most of the wind flow associated with a typical convection-driven fire is inflow, the idea of such powerfully driven outflow winds at the head of the fire is almost too much to imagine…
I know what you mean, Jack, as they should function like a low pressure system from the raising air and sucking wind to the fire location. All I can thing is that it is generating a situation like a tornado or hurricane and putting a spin on the inflow.
It would be nice if there were some of the tropical weather satellites in the area to provide some data on what was going on in these fires. The fires would destroy most monitoring equipment in the area, so remote sensing is the only way to figure out what is going on. Even doppler radar feeds would help if they can sense the smoke.
These things didn’t act like anything I’ve seen, or heard about the fires in SoCal. The Cedar fire was supposed to be a “perfect storm” fire, but it paled in comparison to the Victoria fires. Flames shooting up 100 meters is some really scary stuff. The old eucalyptus have the height of Sequoias, so that may explain some of it.
We’ve leased two heavy firefighting choppers, Elvis (Erickson Sky-crane modded as a firefighter) and a Sikorsky S-61 ‘Fire king’ from Carson’s. We also have a few smaller choppers and aircraft, And New Zealand has loaned us their Mil Mi-8MTV-1 chopper with the HL5000 Bambi-Bucket system.
NZ sends big bucket to fight Victoria fires
Even if we’d had a hundred of them Sat… I doubt it would have made a lot of difference. The two main firestorms that did most of the damage were unstoppable.
A firefighting crew of 50 has also arrived from NZ, and 60 wildland fire experts are due to arrive from the USA in the morning (though it appears we are paying for their services, and I suppose we are paying for NZ and the others too). Along with crews from all around Australia and overseas, our Victorian crews, which have been doing 18 hour shifts, should be able to begin taking a well-earned rest. Forensics and other specialists teams are also arriving from around the World to help. We appreciate all the help we are getting and give thanks. 🙂
And no… nothing about this *event* is normal. Given the weather the past decade, I don’t even know what *normal* is any more.
Frankly, everyone is broke. The US has been scrambling to cover the costs of the latest Santa Barbara fires, because the state of California is beyond broke.
The GOP wants the services, they just don’t want to pay for them, which means there is no money available for the hard times.
That big DC-10 water tanker might have made a dent, but that is one expensive aircraft to operate. The roll-on systems for C-130s might be a better investment overall. They are effective and the airframes tend to be a lot newer than the purpose built aircraft.
Face it, we need a lot more data to figure out what to plan for in the future.
Yup. Everyone is broke. Some just don’t know it yet, or won’t admit it.
The new jumbo firefighter might have been useful 🙂
747 Aerial Fire Fighting
Evergreen Aviation Supertanker Gallery
Wouldn’t do us any good to have one here. The cost of having it sitting in a hanger for 8 months or so of the year would be horrific. But, being a Jumbo, could be used to fight fires over the whole globe all year round.
They admitted here on a talk show Thursday that People, Gov & Business need to start seriously listening to the Climatologists and Weather experts as they have been proved right many times over the past few years. This disaster last Sat was predicted, not just a few weeks earlier but two years ago. A few weeks ago is when several weather & fire experts started the dire warnings which nobody listened too. It was too late to do much to prevent the hell fires, but lives could have been saved.
The problem with the 747 is having a runway to handle them available. Most of those with the length are the main commercial airline hubs. The DC-10 they fly in the California fires is more adaptable, and can use the same runways as a Boeing 707/Airbus 330, although it definitely has less capacity.
The roll-on kits for the C-130 would be the cheapest alternative because you already own own the aircraft, and can use them in their normal transport role when they aren’t needed for fires.
A secondary concern is that you can successfully bail out of a C-130, something that hasn’t been recorded with the military versions of the Boeing 7XX series.
Very true, and yes… The old C-130 (bless the uncomfortable, ugly beast’s heart) would be much better here. 🙂 I would hate to think what would have happened to a 747 flying over those fires on Sat! The old Herc is harder to down than a bat outa hell. 🙂 Saved the ass of my team at least twice in Cambodia, and I’ve flown into, and out of, a few hairy places on one. The only reason they give out parachutes on a Herc is so you have something to sit on that your ass won’t freeze to! 😉 LOL My 2nd trip was over a hot JZ, and we were told by the commander to go visit the local scrap metal dump first and find something bulletproof to stick between the webbing and the shell. I thought he was joking at first… he wasn’t. Nothing like jumping outa a plane when nasties are shooting. Ahem… neway… 😉
I suspect on Sat, a 747 would have become scrap. No way it could have handled that kind of chaotic air, I don’t care what mod’s they’ve done to it.
Maybe we should refit a few old ‘Jolly Greens’ (formally: Sikorsky HH-3, HH-53 and CH-53). I think we still have a few in mothballs. The Aussie desert is good for keeping things, like in Arizona. 🙂 I remember a Vietnam vet on my team saying that there was nothing more beautiful than a JGG when trying to evac a hot zone. 🙂 We had a few trips on them, and I agree with him. Seeing a Jolly coming in with it’s the three 7.62 miniguns spitting 4,000 rounds a minute at a hot pickup certainly made the baddies go elsewhere, very fast. LOL A few times a HH-53 or a flight of Sandys (A-1’s), F-105 or F-4’s saved our asses. Usually, F-105’s or F-4’s would sanitize our LZ, then we’d come in a couple Joly’s with a flight of Sandy’s flying close air support. We rarely had any problems. 🙂
They can take a heck of a beating. Better than those twice damned UH-60 Black-Hawk’s! Thank the stars they weren’t around wen I was serving. I’d rather have walked. Bloody deathtraps.
Yeah… I have a big ol soft spot for the old C-130 and HH-3/HH-53. 🙂 The USA used to make good stuff, once.
The C-130 is used by the Hurricane Hunters, so you know the wings don’t fall off with a little turbulence, as has been known to be present over large fires, but the big thing is that the system isn’t a permanent modification to the airframe, so you can use it for normal ops when there are no fires. Special aircraft are undoubtedly more efficient, but probably not enough of a difference to justify having them sit on the ground more than half of each year.
Think about dropping water and retardant with the accuracy of an AC-130 gunship. They have the infrared sensors and all-weather navigation capabilities that would allow attacks all night long. They wouldn’t have to guess where the hot spots were. There is a lot of military technology that should be used for these types of situations.
The F-105 proved it’s worth after it had been canceled. Thuds were very tough, and very reliable, but no one knew that until they were used in real conditions in SEA. The same for the A-10 – the type was scrubbed just before they proved how useful they were against armor. I will stop there before I start ranting about what a piece of garbage the F-35 would seem to be with its Swiss Army knife approach.