Make no mistake about just how much money is involved here.
I got to work on a helicopter used for fire. It was a 1980s French something or another. It took an RPG in Afganistan and was refurbed to live in the pacific northwest.
The crew makes an insane amount of money. They are tickled with how many fires there are a year and how they "have" to be put out. I'm talking areas so far away from houses that it takes an hour to get there by helo, dump a few buckets, then an hour back. MAYBE in a 9 hour shift you get 12 buckets dumped.
This vehicle has only one turbine engine and goes through about 300 gallons an hour. There were two blackhawks in the same area that burn twice that, two engines.
Think of the money to make it not only profitable, but exceptionally so, to run vehicles that burn 300 gallons an hour for 8-12 hours a day, per helo, per engine, with crew, and the millions it costs to upkeep, cert, logistics, insurance, etc.
This is business now. And that's just one annecdote about helos. When you see people and machinery it takes to run firecrews, it's a wonder there aren't even more firecrew arsonists than there already are.
I got to work on a helicopter used for fire. It was a 1980s French something or another. It took an RPG in Afganistan and was refurbed to live in the pacific northwest.
The crew makes an insane amount of money. They are tickled with how many fires there are a year and how they "have" to be put out. I'm talking areas so far away from houses that it takes an hour to get there by helo, dump a few buckets, then an hour back. MAYBE in a 9 hour shift you get 12 buckets dumped.
This vehicle has only one turbine engine and goes through about 300 gallons an hour. There were two blackhawks in the same area that burn twice that, two engines.
Think of the money to make it not only profitable, but exceptionally so, to run vehicles that burn 300 gallons an hour for 8-12 hours a day, per helo, per engine, with crew, and the millions it costs to upkeep, cert, logistics, insurance, etc.
This is business now. And that's just one annecdote about helos. When you see people and machinery it takes to run firecrews, it's a wonder there aren't even more firecrew arsonists than there already are.