Private Pilots Playing With Fire

It is about 4:30 p.m. May 24, and there is a brush fire in the area of the Norwegian Grade between Moorpark and Thousand Oaks. Our Fire Department is out there with trucks, tankers, bulldozers, CDF crews, helicopters and air tankers. Guess who else is out there! Private planes, mostly single-engine ones, whose pilots appear to be playing in the thermals around the fire!

I live on the bluff of Peach Hill. My attention was drawn to this when I heard an airplane go over our house--and it sounded low. I guessed that it was probably a Fire Department aircraft, but when I went to look I saw a single-engine plane heading toward the smoke cloud. As I watched, he rode straight up and made a sharp turn, probably less than a mile from the cloud.

It would seem to require only a tiny bit of common sense for our local private pilots to realize that our firefighting craft need to be given empty skies to maneuver in. Because ours is uncontrolled air space, we will probably never know who these pilots are. But they know, and I ask them to have a little more consideration in the future.

Frankly, they are entitled to kill themselves if they want to, but they have no right to jeopardize either our firefighters or the job they are trying to do.

LYNNE OWENS

Moorpark