Letting fires burn

[alanjh595]

Addendum to my previous post:

Sit down, shut up, and hang on.

You are just a very small cog in a very large wheel. Get over it!

I feel like you are addressing me, but we are in agreement on this issue so I'm not sure why.

I am NOT addressing you personally. i have a great deal of respect for you and wouldn't do that. Unless........you made me mad, and you haven't done that.

[ShannonG]

I am NOT addressing you personally. i have a great deal of respect for you and wouldn't do that. Unless........you made me mad, and you haven't done that.

[ferri]

[seewood]

If the planes are actioning a fire, the helicopters are grounded or actioning another fire in the area.. When planes have done their drop and go back for more, heli's can action the fire where required. The two do not occupy the same airspace for obvious reasons.

Fires are prioritized for action. Similar to structure fires: life safety, property safety, timber values, resources available, current weather and weather short and long term, especially wind forecasts.

Great to ask questions, the experienced will answer the best they can.
Remember the only dumb question is one you already know the answer.

[tsayta]

I have two friends in the helicopter mechanic business. They of course have many friends and acquaintances that are flying helicopters. So my experience is not first-hand but passing along what I've been told by someone that would know. They have been told by many Pilots that there is an obvious lack of reaction to start fighting fires. In his opinion they don't do what's best to put the fire out they do what's best to keep the fire going as long as they can to make the most money. I am encouraging him to give his story so he can be more accurate but the overall gist is they're not trying to put the fire out as soon as they can they're trying to keep them going as long as they can to make as much money as they can. And this last fire that they watched for 24 hours before they started hitting it is a good example because enough people will remember this and maybe they'll be an inquest into it and find out what's really going on and who's making the terrible decisions and maybe their heads will roll when the truth comes out. What pilots have told him and when he continues to say is it's nothing but greed. He's told me stories of Pilots ready to go and their Fire Boss hold them back. Instead of getting it fires at first light they'll wait around an hour or to have a meeting first and then decide what to do. Can you imagine if the fire department did that When they showed up at a fire. People should be furious and we should be starting to ask questions to the people in charge and make them accountable as I truly do believe it is greed driving the fire industry

He said would. He meant wouldn't

[common_sense_guy]

This makes absolutely no sense. Fire response is paid for by the BC government, and the helicopter pilots are contracted. Do you really think they are sitting around making sure a fire gets really big before they engage it? There are a million criteria for a fire boss to release choppers to fly, including wind speed, info from the fire's front lines, other birds in the air, flight traffic from the departing airport, blah blah blah. While it may not seem to THEM that they are getting in the air fast enough, they clearly aren't taking a minute to see the bigger picture if that is the story they are telling.

from the headline today it appears even Zimmerman is questioning why they're not hitting it when they should be.

[Jflem1983]

Third hand information quite often gets the details wrong. Would be interested in hearing from a pilot.

Picked up an ancient hitch hiker at Monte Lake years ago. He was a fire fighting pilot. I drove him to Kamloops. He had wonderful stories. He said he had flown bomber in 2003.
I never asked about scheduled delays. Wish i would have asked more questions

[ShannonG]

from the headline today it appears even Zimmerman is questioning why they're not hitting it when they should be.

Which is NOT to say there are a bunch of planes and choppers sitting at the airport, waiting for things to get really bad. Things already are really bad. How many fires started at the same time? That's a worst case scenario for Forestry.

[LTD]

Theres choppers sitting ready to go on the westside at multiple places had any one of them been told to hit the Okanagan mountain park fire before the wind kicked it out of control it would've been out with a few buckets of water same with the one above gormans . Now we have multiple fires and not enough resources the ball WAS seriously dropped on this and all they do is make excuses.

[youjustcomplain]

from the headline today it appears even Zimmerman is questioning why they're not hitting it when they should be.

Don't take this the wrong way, but you simply don't understand what the job of organizing and managing a huge fire response, utilizing a variety of agencies looks like.
BC Forestry Service
Local Peachland fire service
All of the mutual aid responding fire services from the area
RCMP
COSAR
Contracted Air support
Contracted ground supports like heavy equipment operators
Equipment replacements
Fuel replacements
Lodging for ALL staff working on the event
Food for all staff working on the event

All of that is added to the burden of trying to understand what the weather is going to do, knowing where the fire front is, exactly and how best to fight it while not putting any crews in excessive danger. If all of that isn't hard enough, all of it needs to be documented along the way.

Now, ALL crews involved, pilots included, must wait for their orders. Sometimes it takes hours where staff feel they should be doing *something*, but there is an awful lot of planning and coordinating being done outside of their view before they can just start working. Just imagine 6 choppers, 22 fire engines, 50 forestry ground crews, food supports, fuel trucks, private citizens with bulldozers and such all show up to random spots of a fire and start doing what they think is best. Trust me, that wouldn't work.

[dogspoiler]

A couple of things that I have heard that may apply.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

When we do not learn from our mistakes, we are doomed to repeat them.

I agree 100% with Gerry Zimmerman. From my house we could see three of the "spot" fires started by the lightning, if those fires had been actioned right away we would not have thousands of hectares on fire right now.

[LTD]

the first phone call should be to a helicopter company so they can get water on it before its out of control then make all the other calls this isnt rocket science man

[youjustcomplain]

Theres choppers sitting ready to go on the westside at multiple places had any one of them been told to hit the Okanagan mountain park fire before the wind kicked it out of control it would've been out with a few buckets of water same with the one above gormans . Now we have multiple fires and not enough resources the ball WAS seriously dropped on this and all they do is make excuses.

Lightning storm appears and starts a bunch of fires. Choppers don't just take off and start dropping water. Not how it works at all. BC Forestry Service needs to figure out where the fires are, how many fires, what size of fire, how close structures are to the fires, what type of terrain the fire is burning in, how best to access each one. They gather all of that, then set priorities. It takes time. Once they decide their priority fires, they start assigning resources. If Peachland was given a higher priority and had air support assigned, then the air support MUST wait for orders. And I'm guessing that's whats happened. Sounds like they were staging, waiting to be told where to go and what to do.

[youjustcomplain]

the first phone call should be to a helicopter company so they can get water on it before its out of control then make all the other calls this isnt rocket science man

Managing people is much more complicated than rocket science.

[dogspoiler]

Don't take this the wrong way, but you simply don't understand what the job of organizing and managing a huge fire response, utilizing a variety of agencies looks like.
BC Forestry Service
Local Peachland fire service
All of the mutual aid responding fire services from the area
RCMP
COSAR
Contracted Air support
Contracted ground supports like heavy equipment operators
Equipment replacements
Fuel replacements
Lodging for ALL staff working on the event
Food for all staff working on the event

All of that is added to the burden of trying to understand what the weather is going to do, knowing where the fire front is, exactly and how best to fight it while not putting any crews in excessive danger. If all of that isn't hard enough, all of it needs to be documented along the way.

Now, ALL crews involved, pilots included, must wait for their orders. Sometimes it takes hours where staff feel they should be doing *something*, but there is an awful lot of planning and coordinating being done outside of their view before they can just start working. Just imagine 6 choppers, 22 fire engines, 50 forestry ground crews, food supports, fuel trucks, private citizens with bulldozers and such all show up to random spots of a fire and start doing what they think is best. Trust me, that wouldn't work.

Exactly the point. If helicopters had been sent out with buckets right away, the fires would be out and everything you mentioned would be redundant.