Paperwork Caused Fuel Waste In California Fire Fight

The Huffington Post News Editors, Huffington Post
Mon, 05/11/2009 - 5:22am

LOS ANGELES — When the fire devastating Santa Barbara broke out, tanker planes had to fly twice as far to load water and retardant because the U.S. Forest Service did not have a contract in place yet to use a nearby airport. Three aircraft were able to resupply once at the Santa Maria airfield 60 miles north of the blaze but they were later diverted about 120 miles east to Porterville after officials realized a supply contract wasn't in place at the nearby airport, said forest service spokesman Jason Kirchner. It's impossible to know what impact the longer resupply flights had on efforts to stamp out the blaze in its first 24 hours, but being able to land at Santa Maria would have saved time, said John Richardson, air operations branch director for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Four planes made the hourlong roundtrips to Porterville later Tuesday, and six planes did so Wednesday morning before the Santa Maria airfield was open to the aircraft, cutting the length of resupply missions in half. The contract confusion illustrates the challenges posed by an increasingly longer fire season as government agencies plan for a traditional fire season starting mid-May to November. "It was an odd time for this to happen," Kirchner said.

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