Colorado is suffering wildfires this summer, forcing thousands to evacuate their homes, with our own Stephen Green possibly among them. If Colorado’s experience this year is anything like Texas’ experience last year, then it can expect little to no help from the federal government. But Texas is a red state, Colorado is a swing state, so perhaps there’s hope that Obama won’t quite go Soviet on it as he did on Arizona on Monday.
Still, the Obama administration has slashed the US Air Force budget by about $4 billion. Sequestration threatens even more cuts. This is relevant to the wildfires because it takes aircraft to fight them. But before we get to that, environmental policy may already stand in the way of putting the fires out, according to an editorial in the Colorado Springs Gazette:
Part of the problem is red tape and vague policy regarding use of military aircraft to put out fires, even when they burn federal property. Part of it involves intentional interference with aerial fire suppression. Part of the problem is the Obama administration.
Environmentalists have fought the use of slurry for years, which may or may not explain why Obama seems to lack enthusiasm for a robust tanker fleet. Environmentalists sued to stop the use of fire retardant after it killed 50 steelhead trout in the Santa Ynez River near Santa Barbara, Calif., in 2009. An earlier lawsuit involved the accidental dumping of between 1,000 and 2,000 gallons of fire retardant into Oregon’s Fall River in 2002, a mistake that killed all fish in the river. That mishap involved a slurry formula that is no longer used.
As a result of the most recent lawsuit, the Forest Service adopted rules that prevent dropping slurry within 300 feet of streams and lakes except when human lives are at risk. Forest officials say the rules won’t harm firefighting efforts.
We hope that is true. Even if it is, we know that a shortage of planes to drop retardants most certainly hinders firefighting throughout the country. That’s common sense.
Indeed. But common sense is uncommon in Obama’s Washington. The Weekly Standard follows up on those aircraft Colorado needs.
A C-130 fitted with the Modular Airborne FireFighting System (MAFFS) can drop 3,000 gallons of fire-retardant material in 5 seconds, and reload in just 15 minutes. This tempo is crucial to containing wildfires like the one devastating Colorado Springs. However, of a current fleet of nearly 380 C-130s, only eight can be fitted with the MAFFS—and four of them are already in the skies over Colorado. With another fire looming in the north of the state, there is no excess capacity to help protect civilian areas. That means thousands of exhausted firefighters on the ground are without enough of the crucial support they need to control the fires.
All this raises concerns about President Obama’s defense budget, which cuts 65 C-130s from the fleet over the next four years. While that will leave 318 C-130s, the demands on the fleet are not shrinking in Afghanistan or other places. Nor did the Air Force have much choice in the matter.
The Air Force took the brunt of Pentagon budget cuts in the 2013 budget, shrinking by 4 percent (or roughly $4 billion dollars), after having a flat budget since 2004. Since 2001, over 500 aircraft have been retired, and another 300 will be scrapped by 2017. All this is happening while demand for the Air Force increases: The service flew approximately 400 sorties per day in Afghanistan and Iraq during 2011, while also fighting in Libya and delivering thousands of tons of disaster relief aid to Japan after its earthquake and tsunami. C-130s have been central to all these operations, and the proposed cuts will reduce airlift capacity among all the Air Force’s components: active, reserve, and guard. Sequestration would be even worse, mandating equal percentage cuts down to the program level across the service, with no flexibility for Air Force leadership to target the cuts.
But as the wildfire in Colorado shows, readiness and flexibility are sometimes needed at home as much as abroad. Cutting more C-130s puts a greater strain on the entire Air Force fleet.
Pay close attention to Obama’s priorities on this. Will he put trout ahead of swing state voters? His administration already took three days to respond, a timeline that got George W. Bush clobbered in the press despite the fact that most of the problems during Hurricane Katrina were local.
The Whine fiddles while America burns.
Slow day for news? I think you are stretching a bit. Just a bit. I am by no means an Obama supporter, actually I pretty much hate him. Even so, I can’t swallow this story.
I agree with Daniel; this is stretching it a bit. I’d personally say that the bigger challenge is not so much availability of resources *within* the Air Force, as it is how those resources get moved around.
Right now, the 302nd (a tenant unit) at Peterson AFB is engaged in the firefighting activity, but it’s not an airlift base. Neither are any of the AF bases in Colorado; most, except for the AF Academy, fall under AF Space Command, which does not maintain a cargo/C-130 fleet of any size. In order to bring more planes into the area, AFSPC has to coordinate those resources from other MAJCOMs, like AMC (Air Mobility Command, who owns most of the C-130s in the inventory). AMC then has to weigh those requests against its own mission load, and figure out how to support. Also, as you mention in the story, there’s the issue of how many planes can be fitted with MAFFS, how many MAFFS the AF owns to begin with, which bring along with them certification requirements for the crews in order to operate them, and so on. This is certainly a limiting factor, but isn’t necessarily directly linked to the fleet being downsized. Another factor here for the Air Force that leadership must be looking at is the fact that both the housing areas on the Academy itself were evacuated last night – a direct threat could necessitate pulling AF resources off the civilian area in order to protect the installation. And so on.
My point is, the current situation here’s got nothing (or at least, very little) to do with the military budget being cut and the (aging) plane inventory being downsized. That very serious problem – which deserves a lengthy analysis in its own right – is tangential to what’s going on in Colorado right now. Bringing it up like this actually seems to minimize the problem, as it has effects on national security extending far, far past civilian fire-fighting support. There are a lot of other factors here at play, and the Air Force has a very complicated situation that they’re dealing with. It’s not a “blame Obama” situation.
Remember the Yellowstone and other fires out west and in Florida in the 1990′s? For a long time the Forestry and Parks services have had a hand’s off approach to land management. That is to say they banned logging, even minimal logging to clear out dead trees, severe insect infestations or simply to clean up undergrowth and ground litter. At the same time the policy was to vigorously fight even the smallest fire. What this did was to cause a build up of flammable material. Eventually a fire brewed up in the right conditions and all that fuel made it unstoppable.
Other governments have done the same. Parts of California denied permission to build fire breaks, use controlled burns, etc., while at the same time allowing development further out into the forest along the tops of ridgelines. Remember how that has worked out with powerful fires raging through these neighborhoods?
I wonder if Colorado, Denver in particular, had such cutesy “green” policies in place. If they did, history would suggest that they contributed to the strength of these fires.
I am afraid that I disagree with your premise that the Obama administration is at fault. In this era when we scream that goverment is too big why don’t we let private enterprise or the Tea Party or THE CHURCH make sure that all of the vegetation is clear cut around Colorado Springs and there is no chance of wildfires. And , of course a bill will be sent to each person living in their fire protection district to pay for the “PROTECTION” I am making an absurd statement here. There are only so many resources in the USA and they are spread thinly. It appears that the C-130′s where requisitioned on June 24 in anticipation of a situation like this. Looks like they are doing as good a job as possible. I say support them however we can and do not make this into an election year diatribe. I have included some links to this subject.
http://www.af.mil/information/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=10566 http://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/r2/news-events/?cid=STELPRDB5375918
In CA we must have the vegetation cut or we will be fined, however, we have wild fires where I live anyway because we are two blocks from a state park. The last fire in 2008 was just that close. If it wasn’t for the planes and helicopters dumping water from the local dam, I might have lost my home. I know now how frightening a fire like that can be and my prayers are with those families who have lost homes and have been evacuated.