Followup on the fatality of Anne Veseth

The Associated Press has an article that provides more information about Anne Veseth, the firefighter that was killed by a falling snag on Sunday, August 12.

“Her cards were up,” said mother Claire Veseth, 55, a nurse in this college town. “It was an act of God.”

Los Angeles City FD adds another helicopter to its fleet

The Los Angeles City Fire Department is leasing an Erickson Air Crane for four months. This baby has a forward-pointing water cannon designed for high-rise fires. It can fill its tank two different ways, by the usual hover-and-draft  mode, or by lowering a pipe and scooping water as it flies at speed over a large water source.

42 uncontained large fires in the US

After having 70 uncontained large fires in the country on Wednesday, that number is now down to 40. The number of incident management teams committed, including Type 1, Type 2, NIMO, and Area Command, has declined from 31 to 28. Six military MAFFS C-130s are still actively working out of Boise and Sacramento.

Smoke from wildfires

The smoke map shows dense smoke in Idaho and also an interesting area of dense smoke over the Atlantic east of Maine.

Wildfire smoke map, 6:36 p.m. MT, August 18, 2012. NOAA (click to enlarge)

USFS issues RFI for Very Large Air Tankers

The U.S. Forest Service has issued a Request for Information which could lead to Call When Needed contracts for Very Large Air Tankers beginning next year continuing through 2015. 10 Tanker Air Carrier currently has a CWN contract for their two DC-10s, but it remains to be seen if any company with VLATs can succeed financially if they are only used for 60 to 100 hours each year, with no guarantees of ANY income. Evergreen in the past has not been interested in signing up their 20,000-gallon 747 Super Tanker on a CWN contract. The RFI specifies that the aircraft must be able to hold at least 10,000 gallons. The USFS expects to issue a Request for Proposals later in the year which they think could lead to one to three VLATs under CWN contracts in 2013. Or… it could lead to none.