Its the dreaded word often used for lackadaisical approaches and red tape involved, meant for some official guidelines. But, during the times of emergencies, can these be avoided for a speedy and timely response ? Well, that presents us lot more queries than answers. Coming to the point, this CNN article says that due to the red tape involved, about two dozen water dropping helicopters never took off on time to put off the fires. These fires have so far charred 500,000 acres in Southern California.
It took as long as a day for Navy, Marine and California National Guard helicopters to get clearance early this week, in part because state rules require all firefighting choppers to be accompanied by state forestry “fire spotters” who coordinate water or retardant drops. By the time those spotters arrived, the powerful Santa Ana winds stoking the fires had made it too dangerous to fly.
The National Guard’s C-130 cargo planes, among the most powerful aerial firefighting weapons, never were slated to help. The reason: They’ve yet to be outfitted with tanks needed to carry thousands of gallons of fire retardant, though that was promised four years ago.
“The weight of bureaucracy kept these planes from flying, not the heavy winds,” Republican U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher told The Associated Press. “When you look at what’s happened, it’s disgusting, inexcusable foot-dragging that’s put tens of thousands of people in danger.”
Rohrabacher and other members of California’s congressional delegation are demanding answers about aircraft deployment. And some fire officials have grumbled that a quicker deployment of aircraft could have helped corral many of the wildfires that quickly flared out of control and have so far burned 500,000 acres from Malibu to the Mexican border.
But, CA Governor, Arnold has something else to say.
“Anyone that is complaining about the planes just wants to complain,” Schwarzenegger replied angrily to a question Wednesday. “The fact is that we could have all the planes in the world here — we have 90 aircraft here and six that we got especially from the federal government — and they can’t fly because of the wind.”
Indeed, winds reaching 100 mph helped drive the flames and made it exceedingly dangerous to fly. Still, four state helicopters and two from the Navy were able to take off Monday, while nearly two dozen others stayed grounded.
Gov. is right but….
The first of the 15 or so fires started around midnight Saturday. By Sunday afternoon, fires were raging in Los Angeles, San Diego and Orange counties.
At the request of firefighters on the ground, at 4 p.m. Sunday the state Office of Emergency Services asked the National Guard to supply four helicopters. Under state rules, a California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection “spotter” must accompany each military and National Guard helicopter to coordinate water drops.
The spotters have 24 hours to report for duty, and it took nearly all that time for them and the National Guard crews to assemble. By the time they were ready to go, the winds had made it unsafe to fly.
The helicopters finally got off the ground Tuesday.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.