Firefighting Equipment

The California Air National Guard unit based on the Ventura County coast will receive new equipment to fight forest fires under a defense spending bill approved this week by both houses of Congress, officials said. The Air Guard wing, which was based for many years at Van Nuys Airport and has many San Fernando Valley residents in its ranks, moved several years ago to a base near the Point Mugu Naval Air Weapons Station.

From Jordanian firefighters to Greek aircraft, a rare outpouring of international support for Israel helped the nation battle its worst-ever forest fire Friday, but the blaze continued to rage out of control. The death toll was revised to at least 41 people, according to Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld. They included 36 prison guards whose bus was engulfed in flames Thursday as they rushed to help evacuate a nearby prison. The toll includes two police officers who were trapped in the same firestorm that ensnared the bus. One passenger car reportedly was able to escape only by speeding through the flames.

A Trinity County man pleaded guilty Monday to setting three forest fires in 1992 as part of a plot to make money for companies that lease firefighting equipment to state and federal agencies. Ernest Earl Ellison, who worked for his brother's water truck business, admitted he had been paid by fire-suppression equipment owners to set the blazes, said U.S. Atty. Charles J. Stevens in Sacramento. The U.S. attorney's office, the FBI, the U.S.

Citing questions raised by the devastating Station blaze, a local House member has asked that Congress require the U.S. Forest Service to consider lifting a decades-old ban on the use of aircraft to fight fires after dark. Rep. Adam Schiff (D- Burbank) proposed Wednesday that a panel of the House Appropriations Committee include in its 2011 funding bill a provision that the Forest Service conduct a formal study on whether to authorize night flying, something routinely done by the Los Angeles city and county fire departments.

The major east-west highway across the southern part of Florida was closed for the third straight day Monday as uncontrolled wildfires burning in the Everglades shrouded Interstate 75 with thick black smoke. Motorists planning to use the toll road, called "Alligator Alley," again were forced to make long detours to travel between Miami and Fort Lauderdale on the east coast and Naples and Fort Myers on the west.

Pacific Scientific Co. in Duarte won a $1.2 million contract from the Army to supply firefighting equipment

Rep. Elton Gallegly has introduced legislation that would allow federal authorities to use Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve firefighting equipment to fight wildfires. The bill would allow the secretary of Agriculture and the secretary of the Interior to call federal firefighting equipment to a wildfire regardless of whether commercial operators are fully deployed.

Firefighters from four county departments will display their skills for the public today at the annual Fire Service Day at the Fire Training Center next to Anaheim Stadium. The annual event involves firefighters and firefighting equipment from Anaheim, Garden Grove, Stanton and Orange, cities that share communication facilities for fire emergencies. The event will run from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the center at 2400 E. Orangewood Ave.

Waves began breaking over the stern of the burning supertanker Mega Borg on Monday, increasing the risk that the ship, carrying 38 million gallons of light crude oil, might break up and sink in the Gulf of Mexico. An estimated 100,000 gallons of crude already lost from the tanker formed an oil slick three miles long and 200 feet wide surrounded by a lighter sheen 10 miles long and 600 feet wide, the Coast Guard said.

A light early-morning drizzle and an overcast sky Saturday brought relief to the 1,100 firefighters who have been battling a raging brush fire that has ravaged the rugged countryside in San Diego, Orange and Riverside Counties since Wednesday. The fire, which was sparked by military maneuvers in the northernmost portion of Camp Pendleton, burned more than 11,000 acres by midday Saturday and was only 48% contained, U.S. Forest Service spokesman Norm Machado said.

California may be known for its devastating fires, and it may represent 12% of the nation's population, but it received only about 5% of the federal funds provided last year to help fire departments pay for equipment and training. The year before, the state received even less than Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin. California officials say it's another example of the state not receiving its fair share from Washington. And it underscores the challenge the Golden State's delegation faces in trying to wrest more money from a Congress where rural-state lawmakers hold considerable political firepower.

The U.S. Forest Service is reviewing its practice of not flying firefighting helicopters at night, in an apparent response to criticism of how the agency handled the early hours of the huge Station fire. At the urging of the Los Angeles County Fire Department, the Board of Supervisors last week called on the federal government to authorize deployment of water-dropping choppers after dark to battle fires in the Angeles National Forest, where the Station blaze began to spread on its first night.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors called on the federal government Tuesday to authorize the U.S. Forest Service to deploy water-dropping helicopters at night and make greater use of local reinforcements to battle blazes like the deadly Station fire. Acting at the request of the county Fire Department, the board voted 5 to 0 to send letters to Congress and the U.S. Department of Agriculture recommending the policy changes for all fires in the Angeles National Forest. "We need to implement every possible measure to allow firefighters to do their work and put out fires," said Tony Bell, a spokesman for Supervisor Michael Antonovich, who introduced the letters.

Sharply questioning the U.S. Forest Service's aggressiveness, the Los Angeles County Fire Department says in a report on the deadly Station fire that the federal agency should change its policies to allow night flying by water-dropping helicopters and make greater use of local reinforcements to attack any blaze in the Angeles National Forest. In the report, a review of the first five days of the Station fire, County Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman urges the Board of Supervisors to lobby the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Congress to alter the Forest Service's practices to ensure "a timely appropriate response to wildfires" in the Angeles.

U.S. Forest Service officials underestimated the threat posed by the deadly Station fire and scaled back their attack on the blaze the night before it began to rage out of control, records and interviews show. In response to Times inquiries, officials for the Forest Service and Los Angeles County Fire Department said they probably will change their procedures so that the two agencies immediately stage a joint assault on any fire in the lower Angeles National Forest. Angeles Forest Fire Chief David Conklin said his staff was confident that the Station fire had been "fairly well contained" on the first day, so it decided that evening to order just three water-dropping helicopters to hit the blaze shortly after dawn on its second day -- down from five on Day One -- and prepared to go into mop-up mode with fewer firefighters on the ground.

As firefighters continued to battle flames from the Station fire Monday, founders of an exotic animal reserve north of Los Angeles attempted to evacuate hundreds of tigers, bears, lions and other animals as similar facilities in Acton have chosen to keep their beasts in place. At the Wildlife Waystation, workers and a stream of volunteers worked late Monday night to evacuate more than 200 animals sheltered at the refuge in Little Tujunga Canyon. In media interviews throughout the afternoon, staff pleaded for trucks to help evacuate the animals as flames raged nearby.

After two decades of screaming through red lights en route to burning buildings, two former Orange County firetrucks have been relegated to moping along quiet streets in second gear in search of shaggy palm trees. Five months ago, the West Coast Arborists of Buena Park drafted the two obsolete trucks with elevated platforms into a new line of work: grooming the tall palms that dominate the Southern California landscape.

The time has come to fight fire with firepower, according to former fighter pilots who proposed Monday that surplus Air Force jets be used to bomb brush fires in Malibu and Altadena with water. More than 220 sophisticated A-10 bombers used in the Gulf War now sit parked in the Arizona desert. And they're virtually free for the taking to any government agency willing to replace bomb racks and gun mounts with tanks and nozzle tubes, community leaders in the two areas were told Monday.

An easing of gale-force winds early today offered hard-pressed Greek firefighters a brief respite after wildfires raged for two days north of Athens, burning houses and swathes of forest while forcing thousands to evacuate. Officials warned that the vast blaze was still threatening inhabited areas on the capital's northern fringes and near Marathon -- site of one of history's most famous battlegrounds. "There are fewer hazardous points," fire brigade spokesman Yiannis Kappakis said.

The budget Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Tuesday canceled the contract for California's largest firefighting tool, a DC-10 jet, to save $7 million. But the long-term cost to taxpayers could far exceed the savings. Depending on the severity of this fire season, California could potentially spend millions more for aerial firefighting, already one of the most expensive components in wildland firefighting, according to a state analysis.