Contractors Eye California Fires, See $$
Fri Oct 26, 2007 at 09:17:07 AM PDT
Rush diary here - looking at the fires in a whole new way. Reading an excerpt of Naomi Klein's latest book Disaster Capitalism in this month's Harpers can prime anybody for viewing the fires through the eyes of a disaster capitalist.
Today SFGate runs this AP story over conflicting statements of idling, grounded firefighting aircraft in Southern California. Gov Schwarzeneggar says the planes couldn't fly because of the strong winds. A trade industry contractor's liaison says beauacratic red tape kept them grounded. And the forestry department says the fire spotters are trained to work with National Guard pilots, where only Marines were available. Besides FUD, what is this AP story saying?
Well here's what we know:
Thomas Eversole, executive director of the American Helicopter Services & Aerial Firefighting Association, a Virginia-based nonprofit that serves as a liaison between helicopter contractors and federal agencies, said valuable time was lost.
And here's the timeline:
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.
And here's the conditions:
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.
And who is saying what, regarding the idling planes:
- Blaming beauracratic red tape is U.S. Rep. Brian Bilbray, U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher "The weight of bureaucracy kept these planes from flying, not the heavy winds"
- Blaming high winds is Forestry Department Director Ruben Grijalva, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger:
"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."
- Blaming the new C-130 military planes which have "yet to be outfitted with tanks needed to carry thousands of gallons of fire retardant, though that was promised four years ago" was well, hard to say who was blaming the inadequate equipment. But the delay in outfitting the new firefighting C-130s with fire-retardent tanks didn't stop California from retiring the old C-130s, which had tanks:
New tanks were designed, but they failed to fit into the latest C-130s. Designers were ordered back to the drawing board. Republican Rep. Elton Gallegly said Congress was assured the new tanks would be ready by 2003.
Four years later, the U.S. Forest Service and Air Force have yet to approve the revised design. Air Force spokeswoman Capt. Paula Kurtz said "technical and design difficulties" have delayed the program.
Rohrabacher and Gallegly are angered by the delay, which has left no C-130s capable of fighting fires on the West Coast. The last of the older-model C-130s with an original tank was retired by the California National Guard last year.
"It's an absolute tragedy, an unacceptable tragedy," Gallegly said.
The situation meant that rather than deploying C-130s from inside the state, Schwarzenegger was forced to ask Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to call in the six remaining older C-130s from other states as far away as North Carolina.
None of them began fighting the fires until Wednesday afternoon.
So what can we conclude? It does look like the fire officials were slow in approving the planes. But why couldn't the plane manufacturers equip firefighting aircraft with fire-retardent tanks that fit the planes? And why did the state retire the older firefighting planes before the new ones were ready? All I know is Reps Bilbray and Rohrabacher and Elton Gallegly are quoted in this story, as are other state, industry and fire officials.
Before calling foul, we remember the fallacy lesson of post hoc ergo propter hoc: FUD doesn't prove corruption and graft. But there's no fallacy in saying corruption and graft thrive in a FUD environment.
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