Calif. Fire Destroys Calif. Residences 6:51 a.m. ET
SHASTA LAKE, Calif. (AP) -- A fast-growing wildfire destroyed
at least 40 residences near the eastern edge of Shasta Lake,
forcing hundreds of people to flee the area.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/nationa ... fires.html
As you may have noticed, one Wendell Shedd, of New
Hampshire, a State not known for its fire problems, rose
to defend his US Forest Service recently when Pravda
criticised the US administration for failing to bring on
the Il-76 waterbomber. In a widely publicised letter to
Pravda, Shedd reiterated USFS excuses for non-performance
on the Il-76 seen variously in US publications over the last
six (6) years.
The earliest is here, at the Christian Science Monitor, where
Jim Harrison, Santa Barbara County, Calif., fire battalion chief,
says:
"Even if the plane's [only] half as good as they
[Russians he met in California] say it is, I'd have
it here this year."
http://csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/durableRed ... -csm.shtml
Shedd has perhaps not discovered that the very excuses he
wrote up are totally debunked by the statements of the
Forest Service whose failures to decide he likes to support
in this article from the Riverside California Press Enterprise:
http://www.fire.uni-freiburg.de/media/2 ... 905_us.htm
Wendell Shedd aside, this article begs the question:
Where is the 747 air tanker?
Is there or will there ever be such an airtanker?
*The Shedd letter: http://english.pravda.ru/mailbox/22/98/ ... ushin.html