MAILBAG:

I want to mention that CalFire (the California firefighting agency) informs me that the DC-10 Supertanker firefighting aircraft has been classified as “NOT AN INITIAL ATTACK AIRCRAFT.”

What this means is that the DC-10 has not been, and will not be, used at the beginning of fires until all other methods have been tried and failed. I think it’s obvious this is a suicidal policy that resulted in the wildfire holocausts in Southern California recently when the DC-10 was not deployed at the start of the fires.

This policy also appears to be a continuation of the scorched earth policy seemingly employed by the U.S. Forest Service by their deliberate refusal to use any supertankers for more than 12 years during which time scores of people died horribly and tens of thousands of homes were burned including national defense nuclear facilities.

Supertankers could have saved all that destruction but were never called. We must continue to demand that the DC-10, and Boeing 747 also, be used as an initial attack firefighting aircraft, for if we don’t we’ll be condemned to continuous mega-fires destroying our lives, homes, state and country by so-called fire officials who apparently value their paychecks, full employment for auxiliary firefighting personnel, sweetheart subcontractors, disaster benefits and profits from deliberately protracted wildfires more than human life.

This is an out-of-control monstrous bureaucracy that has fed off the charred bodies, homes and national defense facilities of American citizens for more than 12 years, and we have to compel CalFire and the U.S. Forest Service by public pressure to use the DC-10 to put out fires immediately.

The DC-10 can do it and more supertankers should be built. We can’t allow this deliberate carnage to continue!

Ed Nemechek

Landers