A drone’s collision with a water-dropping aircraft fighting the Palisades fire in Los Angeles caused temporary grounding of all aircraft working that fire and took out one of just two amphibious planes capable of repeatedly scooping 1,600 gallons of water from the ocean and delivering it onto nearby flames, Cal Fire told The War Zone.
MORE-WiscoDave
Sorry but Calfire management is another untrustworthy bunch. No better than the feds and you can't believe what they say. Look up the Moonlight fire.
ReplyDeleteThat is a big hole in a wing that is almost two foot thick at the leading edge. Having said that, in the Army, we'd have taped it closed with hundred mile an hour tape and got his ass back in the air in minutes. Eod1sg Ret
ReplyDeleteI would bet that the pilots and operators involved with that aircraft would have done the same thing, patch it up and keep trucking, but they're surrounded by alphabet agencies who had the final say, and who in that crew would stick his neck out to get the job done.
ReplyDeleteWhy is Canada equipment being used? Do we not have such planes?
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, no we do not have those planes.
ReplyDeleteBillions for Ukraine, hundreds of millions in California alone for illeagals, hundreds of millions for DEI initiatives, 80 Billion for a high speed rail line that never got built but no money for a squadron of these aircraft.
DeleteCalifornia is being led by children.
FYI, AeroFlite in Spokane and Bridger Aerospace in Belgrade, Montana both fly CL-415s.
DeleteSince Thursday, AeroFlite has sent 5 planes to SoCal, both tankers and scoopers.
Anon @ 8:08-
DeleteCalFire has 23 Grumman S2Ts, 1 Lockheed C-130H (with 6 more yet to be outfitted with tanks) and 24 helicopters, 12 of which are state of the art Sikorsky S-70 FireHawks.
I'm no apologist for California state government, but the CalFire aviation program is the best in the world. It's the one thing CA does right.