Using a 747 to Fight Wildfires

RotJ writes "It's fire season again. And the government just grounded 33 aging air tankers on Monday due to safety issues. Looking for a modern solution, Evergreen Aviation has come up with a 747 supertanker with 24,000 gallons of tank space onboard, which allows it to cover seven times the area of today's largest existing airtanker. In addition to fighting fires, it will be able to contain oil spills and 'perform challenging homeland security missions' like neutralizing chemical or biological attacks. And think of how many John Goodmans you could cover with fire retardant. Be sure to watch the videos."

Comments

An exercise in futility

[Whumpsnatz]

Sadly, this latest attempt to fight fire with massive loads of water (and money) will be just as unsuccessful as most other efforts. We've put ourselves in a catastrophic situation by suppressing fires for so long, and Bush's idea to remove the fire hazard by removing trees (and not just adjacent to homes) is both counterproductive and another example of his plundering philosophy. Controlled (er, we hope they're controlled) burns are the only way to effectively eliminate the hazard.

I've concluded that the only way the massive fires will go away is when the last forest (/ tree farm) has burned. Once that's happened, fires will be a minor event as brush burns away and fire temperatures only rarely get up to blast furnace levels again.

Of course, the continuing drought may be a marker for permanent climate change, in which case, even more burning will take place. Look at Indonesia, Borneo, Mexico, the US West, and Florida, for example, in years past.

Whumpsnatz's law: If you ignore a problem long enough, it may go away.
Whumpsnatz's corollary: If you ignore a problem long enough, your job may go away.