Assuming it holds, this was a clear example of how effective that strategy is!
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I think it will hold. But my point, in this hellacious fire season and what looks to be a trend, the old standard of using S-2’s exclusively on IA needs to be re-thought. Don’t get me wrong…S-2’s do an incredible job for 90% of the IA fires. However, quick thinking in the size up needs to include will using a LAT or even a VLAT, sooner, to keep the fire in check long enough to get the ground crews in and do their job, especially during these extraordinary fire years? These fires obviously want to get up and run from the git-go. Hit them hard and hit them hard early…
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@pyrogeography needs to see the spots take off in that clearcut today. I caught it in the one hour timelapse, but I never checked the actual time, what seemed like 4-5 frames (1.5 minutes?) and that entire clearing was fully involved?! Our foothills are ripe. Yikes.
I left work to a later work mtg and was expecting to check in here with 500+ acres and eventually zone 50 of Dixie and another round of “which IMT is on deck?” Huge win to see it much cooler than expected and taking the fight out of it. Strong work all around!
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You could not be more correct A904G. Hit them as hard as possible while they are small.
I will give you an analogy.
Why were/are strategic bombers kept circling over the North Pole all the time. Answer: To keep things from going nuclear.
Get the big stuff in the game ASAP. It’s cheap insurance.
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@A904G speaking on ops in SOPS only, ATs are ordered as closest available. Which include LATS. This has been long standing on the FED side and certainly a while on the state and when LG request fixed wing. LATs in IA are a given. AA preference to ordering additional ATs is on them whether they order closet available or specific to T3 ATs or T1s or VLAT…no different then IC discretion on ground resource requests. But, yes I have heard an increase in CF AAs ordering not just their own CF closet AT, but LATs which may not be closet available. I’m all for AA discretion, but the IA first 2 ATs should always be closest.
Sorry to side bar this fire’s convo.
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Saved it today, but it’ll burn soon enough. Probably at night when we can’t fly. I spent a year crawling all over the Yuba County Foothills in 2014 writing their Community Wildfire Protection Plan. The country is doomed. Poor access, no planning, and grows vegetation like nobody’s business. All the VLATs in the world won’t change that.
Here is a map showing every place I took a photos of scary/terrible/pucker conditions out the window of a pickup during our survey work. The Google Street View is old, but tells the same basic story.
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Well said and scary.
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