General fire discussions

[brocks]

sorry robbage just taking the micky out of the situation,the last line is me being stupid its just that it took so long to post anything about the fire,but yet they can post fire alerts about 2.5hectare fire a lot quicker

[Magnus]

Just got back from delivering a fresh crew to Lancelin.
Helped CSU to erect a mast whilst we were there.

Fires, there were more than 1, looked fairly substantial.

I heard that the crews there were unable to cut firebreaks due to the danger of unexploded ordinance

[Fastlane]

can see the Pyrocumulus from here.

[WPXZBP]

There are some problems with the network. Some conversations are not being heard - only 6AR/6IP being heard. Fault has been reported.

Many appliances calling over the top of others.

[Tyranus]

I got a page on my SES pager a few moments ago asking for a scribe.

[Helitak_670]

The Fire at Lancelin is a pretty big fire, when I saw it she was burning on 3 fronts. I am surprised that the DC-10 hasn't been called from over in Victoria.

[Fastlane]

The Fire at Lancelin is a pretty big fire, when I saw it she was burning on 3 fronts. I am surprised that the DC-10 hasn't been called from over in Victoria.

How would the DC-10 be of benefit? Its burning in coastal heathland and the round-trip to refill something like that would be a very long time.. !

[brocks]

its all politically motivated,the government in victoria just wanted to be seen to be doing something after the devestating bushfires in 2009,remember the freak fire conditions that day, they only happen every 10 years or so, its just a big grey ghost sitting there doing nothing waiting for the next catastrophic conditions to arrive,be very interesting to see if they get it back next year with what it would be costing them,be interested to see how many drops she has made ,might have made a couple in victorias sunset desert region near mildura,so the lancelin fire in my opinion would be a great place to give it some good testing runs and hopefully you would think they could organize with pierce air base to be able to refuel and fill with retardant 2.03pm after looking at fesa's website maybe they should give the big bird a run at enneabba if property is likely to be impacted in next few hours,they said they could take it to anywhere in australia if needed.22000 hec aint to bad a burn to give the girl a run at least she would be getting used

[newbie]

The DC-10 is only 5 hours flight away, compared to the cost of having the hundreds of fire fighters, earth moving equipment, support staff etc going over a week it would probably come in quite cost effective, I heard the running time was $10k an hour which is the same as one skycrane, plantly of places to run it out of, makes sense to me...
Sadly we need to wait for something really bad to happen and then for the question to be asked '"why didn't you use the DC-10?" until that happens we are just going to keep doing the same old thing.

[Fastlane]

This is why we have experts working for the fire agencies to make these sorts of decisions, not keyboard warriors

[newbie]

I think anyone who has been involved in firefighting for any decent time would agree that FESA tends to be reactive instead of proactive.

[WPXZBP]

Hmmm.... $10k per hour... 5 hours there, 5 hours back, maybe an hour on the fire ground... oh... plus the time taken to reload, refuel, breaks for the crew... let's say here for a day?
24 hours x $10k per hour... quarter of a million dollars or so... any one wish to pay that for one incident?

[Fastlane]

Aerial appliances are an aid, they aren't a replacement for ground crews (in fact, they are worthless without ground crews).

[brocks]

yes fastlane what happend in victoria on black saturday with all the so called experts running the show,true im not one of them but i have fought my share of major fires over the years in victoria and sydney including ash wednesday,like i said my its just my opinion and i reckon we are all intitled to one on here as long as no personal attacks are made.why have a piece of equipment sitting there doing nothing costing money,the vic government made the big sell that we can immobilize it any where to help out here is their chance be proactive just my opinion oh if my maths are right 250,00 could equal 1 house being lost how many homes did toodyay lose again about 38 x 250,00 = about 9.5 million hmmmm me thinks thats quite a bit in savings wouldnt mind that in my bank

[newbie]

You wouldn't fly it over for an hour, we have a fair few fires going on in the state at the moment, bring it over for a week, do what it is intended to do which is trial it on a variety of fires and send it back, it doesn't seem to be trialing much on the east coast at the moment so lets get some data on what it can do in Australia and at the same time put some fires out. The Australian government already pays for half of it so share it around...
This is a good discussion, interesting to see how people feel about this stuff.