Wildfire Forecast for West From Bad to Worse

Fox News ^ | May 23, 2004 | Staff

[Stoat]

YAKIMA, Wash. — Months ago, national fire managers predicted the 2004 wildfire season (search) would be a bad one in the West.

Now, they're changing their forecast: It's going to be worse.

With unseasonably warm temperatures in March and April, the potential loss of heavy air tankers for safety reasons and a years-long drought continuing, Western states and the federal government are facing the possibility of another devastating fire season.

"Things are much worse than they were in February," said Rick Ochoa, national fire weather program manager for the Bureau of Land Management (search).

[Stoat]

Readers who are interested in these topics may also be interested in these ongoing Free Republic threads:

"Forest Service putting up smokescreen about using Super Tanker?"

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1138254/posts

"U.S. Won't Use Air Tankers for Wildfires"

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1133164/posts

Also, be sure to visit

www.waterbomber.com

[steplock]

www.waterbomber.com

Article about the soviet IL-76 written by VC Reporter (VietCong?) badmouthing the US Forest Service ???

Not that the US Forest Service clinton appointed sierra club management didn't help destroy half of the western US ....

[Stoat]

hehe! In this case, I'm pretty sure that "VC" means "Ventura County" :-) See

http://www.vcreporter.com/vc_web_folder/vc_web/index.html

I agree about the U.S. Forest service being completely mismanaged....many people will die and lose their homes needlessly this year as a result of their political game-playing and incompetence.

[ride the whirlwind]

The fire in Alpine CA came within a half mile of my sister's home last year. That's the fire that wiped out much of Julian.

[Parmy]

You know, thirty-five to forty years ago they allowed grazing of the grasslands and forested area and the sheep and cattle ate the grasses. Now there is no grazing allowed, so the grasses become fuel for the wildfires. I guess progress for the environmentalists is to create the conditions for wildfires.

[Stoat]

I hope and pray that she and everyone else will be similarly spared again this year. Unfortunately, Government entities such as the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service appear to be more interested in politics and bending to the whims of "environmentalist" radicals than in protecting good and decent people from a truly horrific death from fire.

[ride the whirlwind]

Yes, I have heard that said.

[Travis McGee]

Here we go.

[MHGinTN]

I found Richardson's sleazy partisan comments egged on by Wolf Blitzen (a reindeer by any other name) to have been particularly telling today. There is not one topic the democrat sleaze machine will not exploit for political capital, regardless of whom gets sacrificed in the process. He we go indeed!

[yoswif]

Smokey Bear says "the more trees we burn, the more green we earn".

[Conservative4Ever]

We had last years fires come within 5 miles of us. One good thing...your sister has burn area around her now...can't burn this year. She should be safe. I shudder to think what this year holds for us.

Red

[JohnA]

This is the piece: http://www.fire.uni-freiburg.de/media/2004/news_20031218_usa.htm

It's called "Arson by Omission"

Also available here (more colorful): http://www.desastres.org/ger/vcreportercom.htm

And for video news (incl aircraft pix in action)
where an esteemed U Mich aviation guru calls the
http://www.forestcircus.com/ "almost criminal",
go to the DenverChannel home page here:
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/index.html

Then to "The Investigators" portion and the video
news piece. If it had its own URL, I'd have given it
out here.

Impressed? Ask Tony to boot this up to national with
Peter Jennings or whoever.

Write Tony here: tony_kovaleski@thedenverchannel.com