Debate over use of military planes grows after fires, crash

Eight of the government's biggest firefighting airplanes sat on the tarmac for weeks as fires erupted across the Rockies last month because incident commanders first called in smaller, privately owned aircraft to bombard flames with water and retardant.

Stephany D. Richards, USAF/AFP/Getty Images

A C-130 plane releases fire retardent over the Colorado wildfires on Monday.

Stephany D. Richards, USAF/AFP/Getty Images

A C-130 plane releases fire retardent over the Colorado wildfires on Monday.

The military's C-130 tankers were not called to duty until June 25, weeks after large fires began destroying homes and causing deaths across the West. The planes flew multiple missions in Colorado before one crashed fighting the White Draw fire in South Dakota on July 1, killing three members of its crew. The cause of the C-130 crash remains under investigation.

The remaining planes were temporarily grounded but resumed flying today.

Federal law prohibits fire managers from calling in the military planes until they first call in private aircraft leased to the government. The law has been the subject of some debate in the aftermath of the recent fires.

Beth Lund, leader of the national-level Type 1 Incident Management Team that managed the 87,284-acre High Park Fire near Fort Collins, Colo., says that contrary to popular belief, the bigger planes aren't necessarily better.

"Fires don't get put out by red stuff coming out of the air," she says. "It's boots on the ground."

U.S. Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Calif., calls the U.S. Forest Service "negligent" for not deploying the tankers sooner. He says there's no doubt homes would have been saved if the military tankers had been called for sooner. He says firefighters have told him that one large tanker could easily stop or significantly slow a fire when it's only a few acres but that cost and deployment time make them a last line of defense.

"The people on the ground are crying for help," Gallegly says. "I think they have a better sense of what they need than someone sitting at a desk."

The National Guard's Mobile Airborne Fire Fighting Systems (MAFFS) slide into a C-130 cargo plane and can drop 3,000 gallons of water or red retardant slurry onto a fire. In comparison, the first privately owned air tankers usually called to fires can drop 820 gallons of retardant but are more maneuverable.

Forest Service critics such as retired Los Alamos National Laboratory astrophysicist Chick Keller say the agency clings to outdated firefighting methods because the American public and Congress refuse to fund and deploy modern aerial firefighting techniques such as drones and large tankers such as MAFFS.

"We spent $1 billion last year in the United States on fire suppression, and we didn't get much suppression — we just lost forests and houses," says Keller, former director of the University of California's Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics and co-founder of the Pajarito Environmental Education Center in Los Alamos, N.M. "The Air Force should do what it does best: protect Americans."

The High Park wildfire that started June 9 destroyed at least 259 homes and killed a woman before two military MAFFS were activated June 25. Fort Collins resident Chrissa Allison says she watched as nearby homes burned and wondered why the military planes didn't join in sooner.

"If that isn't an emergency, then what the heck is?" Allison says.

"Just because they are the biggest tool doesn't make them the best tool," says Reghan Cloudman, a U.S Forest Service spokeswoman. "Air tankers don't put out fires. Firefighters put out fires."

Once activated, the two MAFFS joined the fight against the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history, the Waldo Canyon fire in Colorado Springs that killed two people and destroyed 346 homes.

Lund says she's comfortable with her decision not to use the tankers on the High Park fire once they became available. She says firefighters with hand tools, fire engines and bulldozers successfully protected hundreds of homes: "The real heroes are the guys on the ground."

Gallegly and Keller say proper use of very large tankers could make them the first line of defense, not the last. "They can do in 30 seconds what it takes five bulldozers three days to do," Gallegly says. "They can do a job no one else can do."

Hughes reports for the Fort Collins Coloradoan.

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Military planes fly food into snowbound towns

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) – Military planes flew in tons of emergency food Monday to towns and villages in eastern Romania where thousands have been stranded by blizzards. Some people had to cut tunnels through 15 feet of snow to get out of their homes.

By Daniel Mihailescu, AFP/Getty Images

A man rides an ATV vehicle to clean up the snow in a park in Bucharest on February 13. 74 people were reported to have died in Romania as new snowfall has caused disruption in the south.

By Daniel Mihailescu, AFP/Getty Images

A man rides an ATV vehicle to clean up the snow in a park in Bucharest on February 13. 74 people were reported to have died in Romania as new snowfall has caused disruption in the south.

Since the end of January, Eastern Europe has been pummeled by a record-breaking cold snap and the heaviest snowfall in recent memory. Hundreds of people, many of them homeless, have died and tens of thousands of others have been trapped by blocked roads inside homes with little heat.

Authorities declared an alert Monday in eastern Romania, where 6,000 people have been cut off for days. About a dozen major roads were closed, 300 trains canceled and more than 1,000 schools shut down.

In addition to the food flights, the defense ministry said 8,000 soldiers were clearing roads across Romania and helping people trapped by the snow.

The airport in the southern city of Craiova was closed after a plane with 48 people on board skidded during takeoff Monday into a pile of snow, breaking its propellers. A female passenger broke her leg after she jumped from the plane.

A tugboat on the Danube river, one of Europe's key waterways, was breaking up ice between the Romanian ports of Sulina and Tulcea in eastern Romania. The boat was also bringing food to remote communities in the Danube Delta, where supplies have been affected after 440 miles of the river froze over last week in Romania alone. The Danube winds 1,785 miles through nine European countries to the Black Sea.

In Serbia, tens of thousands are still stranded by the snow, while schools and most businesses remained idle for the second week due to emergency measures to save energy.

An avalanche hit western Serbia late Sunday near the artificial lake of Perucac, sweeping away a man as his wife and child waited in the car nearby. Rescuers say divers will look for the man in the lake.

Emergency officials also plan to use helicopters to pull out sailors stuck on stranded boats on the Danube near the Serbian town of Smederevo, as well as to deliver food to a Danube island near Pancevo, north of the capital of Belgrade.

In Montenegro, helicopters helped evacuate some 50 passengers stranded for three days on a train that was blocked by an avalanche.

Rescuers in southern Kosovo over the weekend pulled a 5-year-old girl alive from the rubble of a house flattened by a massive avalanche that killed both her parents and at least seven of her relatives. Her home in the remote mountain village of Restelica was buried under 33 feet of snow.

In the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, the roof of the Grbavica stadium partially collapsed Monday under the weight of heavy snow but no one was injured. It was the second stadium roof collapse in Sarajevo in as many days, following one at the nearby Skenderija sports stadium that hosted ice skating at the 1984 Winter Olympics.

Bosnia has been paralyzed with record snowfall for over a week. Temperatures as low as minus 22 Celsius have made it difficult to clear the snow.

North of Paris, icebreakers made their way through the frozen Canal St. Denis.

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