After all the hassles and hangups to get the big Martin Mars water bomber down from Canada to use against San Diego County's fires, the window of opportunity to put the big flying boat into action here may have closed.
Its arrival Wednesday afternoon was almost a full day late due to problems clearing customs. It then was barred from flying Thursday due to poor visibility.
With the county's various wildfires now waning, fire commanders are debating whether any of their fires, though they're still burning, lend themselves at this stage to the abilities of the Mars.
Officials are considering sending the plane to make water drops on the Horno/Ammo fire on Camp Pendleton Marine Base, or to fires elsewhere in Southern California, according to a San Diego Fire-Rescue Department spokesman.
Meanwhile, the Mars contines to float in Lake Elsinore, awaiting a mission.
--Greg Gross, Breaking News Team
San Diego County Wildfires 2007
Friday, October 26, 2007
Giant water bomber may not be used
Posted @ 11:32 AM
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16 comments:
Wow, good thing US customs was there to protect us from this threat!
We can't do anything about the weather but CUSTOMS delays? Surely when there is a declared state of emergency, there should be some mechanism for expediting necessary material and personnel.
Can't stop them from crossing the southern border. But, god forbid two Canadians try to enter the USA to help us. Keep up the good work over that at Customs.
Question is why do we have to borrow one of these from Canada? We all pay a shit ton of taxes in CA. We should have one residing in SoCal since we have so many damn fires every year!
This is completely unbelievable to have a plane like this sitting in a lake doing nothing while thousands of acres are being burned ( especially right behind my house here in Lawson Valley - Jamul )
There is no reason for this
Get it up there and let it drop some water
couldn't we just commandeer the Spruce Goose?
Easy to understand this one ... the same visionaries who knew of this whole sad story are now taking it to the next level.
Except you guys in San Diego don't pay shit for fire fighting. You don't even have a county fire department, and your city only has one water-dropping helicopter.
Stop blaming customs, the weather, the wind, etc! The only responsible for the plane not flying earlier are all the bureaucrats sitting in their chair waiting to have a piece of paper signed or whatever other excuse they could come up with.... In a situation like this, one has to be pro-active.. This plane could and should have been up in the air, and the damage would not be as bad as it is now. This plane is used in several European countries to fight fires and is a great resource, it can refill in the Ocean (free water!) and drop so much more water than the helicopters. San Diego should have one of those based here permanently.
I live in Hidden Meadows and saw the bomber flying overhead in the direction of Lake Elsinore from the direction of the Harris fire. It must have made it's first drop on the Harris fire.
And, no, I don't think I'm mistaked about the plane... it was HUGE and red!
"mistaken" opps
There are only TWO remaining Martin Mars water tankers in the world and they're based in Port Alberni, British Columbia. They're not making any more of them (they only made 6 production models in the late 1940's that the tanker is based on.)
They've most probably never fought fires in Europe, as a previous poster stated (he/she may be confusing it with the much smaller Canadair/Bombardier 215/415's that *are* used Europe, Canada and a few US states.)
Check out http://martinmars.com for a detailed history of this plane and her sisters.
What are those planes doing in Canada, the snow isn't going to catch fire. San Diego should buy some DC-10s that can drop water, since major wildfires seems to happen every 4 years here.
I live in Lake Elsinore. The Martin Mars made numerous runs today the 26th. I know because it's approach to the lake is directly over my house at about 300 ft. I do not have any idea of where it is dumping but the turnaround was less that 45 minutes in some cases. I am told it made some runs yesterday which surprised me since visibility on the lake was extremely limited.
I live in Port Alberni where the planes are from, they are an awesome fire fighting tool, They have never been to Europe and they have sat on many lakes while fires burn out of control because of politics. they can and will put the fires out. When they come back to Port Alberni, they do a fly by of the town to let us all know they are back, and a job well done. They have been working on the Harrison fire and are moving to their next mission. The one bomber was delayed the first day because it hit two ducks over Oregon and had to be repaired. Havent heard anything about customs, as far as I know everything went smoothly
Despite its size and capacity the Mars is not always the best suited water bomber for fighting wildfires; while it performs quite well over flat or gently sloped terrain it lacks the maneuverability and precision dive-bombing capacity required for efficient operation in most areas found in SoCal. Not that the old military transports usually hired by the state to do the job are any better though, far from it. For the first time this year we were able to observe the CL-415's sent from Canada at work and there is little doubt that this aircraft designed specifically the purpose -as opposed to a military conversion- is far superior to anything we have ever sent flying against fires so far. If the state or fire-prone Counties are to invest any tax money on firefighting equipment then it should be on a fleet of CL's and the training of local crews to fly them.
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