Forest Service may end ban on using firefighting aircraft at night

The head of the U.S. Forest Service told a Senate panel Wednesday that water-dropping helicopters would have been deployed during the critical first night of last summer's disastrous Station blaze if they had been available and that the agency is considering ending its decades-long ban on using federal firefighting aircraft after dark. Under sometimes pointed questioning by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Rep. Adam Schiff (D- Burbank), Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell also defended the agency's handling of the fire the next morning, when a heavy aerial assault did not begin until several hours after daylight. He said aircraft alone would not have stopped the flames from racing through the Angeles National Forest. Schiff later expressed doubt that an earlier air attack on Day 2 would have been ineffective because of steep terrain, as the Forest Service determined after an internal review. "The conclusion that it would not have helped anyway is a little too facile," he said. Schiff said he was confident that the Forest Service would resume flying at night, a tactic it abandoned in the 1970s after a fatal crash. "We are moving toward a change in policy," he said...more