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Drone Diverts Firefighting Planes, Incurring $10,000 Cost
An anonymous reader writes: Fire is raging through thousands of acres of forest in California. A few days ago we discussed how a man's personal drone was shooed away from a fire site. Now, the drone situation has gotten worse. The U.S. Forest Service is helping to fight the fire by sending planes full of fire retardant to drop on the surrounding area. Unfortunately, one of the missions had to be diverted because a private drone had encroached upon the planes's airspace. The mission involved three planes, all loaded with retardant. One was large enough to find another target on which to drop its payload, but the other two simply had to jettison and return to base. Officials say the failed mission wasted at least $10,000. They're now having to spend extra time keeping an eye out for these drones and trying to educate operators on the temporary restrictions in place around forest fires.
Much like making a ruckus over peanuts is now enough for aeroplanes to divert, because they "had to". No, they were just too scared to deal with the problem in the manner it deserves, even though that's part and parcel of their jobs. They could've dropped that $10000 worth of fire retardant on top of the drone and it would've ceased to be a problem. Instead they ran away, to save themselves to run away another day. Fire"fighters" indeed.
Besides, California burns so much because it doesn't burn enough: Forest fires are part of the ecosystem. If it doesn't burn now, it'll burn more and hotter later. No amount of fire retardant is going to stop that, short of paving the entire thing and putting up a giant parking lot. The whole effort is one big exercise in running away.
If we cannot create firefighting craft which can tolerate drone strikes?
Pretty sure I didn't stutter.
Please don't tell me you are that stupid.
Please don't tell me that you are an idiot. I knew already. You are an AC.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Let me think: a better idea would be to stop morons from flying the damn toys near people who are trying to save lives and property. If they can't control themselves then throw their asses in jail.
So you didn't actually read my comment, did you? You typed that whole response with your knee?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There is absolutely no justification in fighting forest fires with this level of expense. If people build homes and cities where it is fire prone (or hurricane prone or flood prone) it is their responsibility to pay for their decision, in the form of insurance premia, property loss or even loss of life. These people constantly shout "get the government off my back", oppose BLM, flout land use fees, take up arms against the government supporting tax cheats. Then when there is forest fire or something, these guys go AWOL, and a new set of guys start shouting for government action. They seem to have gotten this two team act to near perfection.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact