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cekkk wrote:

tomman58 wrote:
cekkk, talked to a friend that has his kids in CO. He sad they were quite west of the flood area and you would be further west. Hoping this is so.
when I talked to him about your comment on the FS not using local fireguys he laughed and said it ain't Fred's garage down the street that was on fire and you need a guy that is trained and built like a gorilla to go into those situations. He may be quite right about that from what programs I've seen on the training.
He said same with the planes and the dumping of water and retardant that training is needed and if they make a mistake it can cost lives and further damage. Seemed like a correct statement.
I do know one thing if either of these 2 areas screwed up and local died and planes crashed there would be hell to pay also.

Your friend may laugh, but only because he doesn't understand what was going on. I've served on two volunteer departments in the area and know of many, many more who deal with wildfires almost one hundred percent, (traffic accidents aside) since structure fires are an insignificant percentage of fire calls. I can't recall a year when there were two substantial structure fires, and most years there are none. Remind your friend that we are surrounded by national forest, and point out that immediately after the Hayman, probably 90% of the volunteers got their magic red cards in the following six months.

His comment about built like a gorilla is proof he has no clue. Does he think the US Air Force pilots dropping retardent don't know what they are doing? As recently as last year officials were slow to get the Air Force involved. Item I don't need to comment further. No disrespect intended, but it sounds as though he has an ideology providing his response.

The plane remark was in repose to your "Air tankers volunteered but were also refused due to regulations requiring contract planes, inadequate in numbers, be exhausted first." remark. He was saying the wind currents in that area are something else and those pilots that deal with the fires are trained for that activity. I also don't hink he was being rude to your volunteers but there really is extensive training those fireguys get. I don't know what is correct or not but he spends a lot of time in CO so he isn't totally knowledgeable.
Just his opinion, never been to CO so I just go with the flow on this one.