Dear Editor:

I find it hard to express my outrage at the spectacle of another uncontrolled wildfire almost destroying my home and family in Landers, Calif., and bringing terrible destruction and loss of life to our High Desert, destroying thousands of acres, scores of homes, lives and other property with fire and other government officials AGAIN refusing to use the ONLY effective firefighting tool that will control wildfires we face. I refer as always to the super water tanker aircraft like the Jumbo Boeing 747 (see: Evergreen Supertanker (on Internet) and DC-10 that the obstructionist government aviation and firefighting agencies have restricted from service for at least five years that I remember! Also, since 1995, Russia has offered us its IL-76 Super Tanker to fight wildfires and has been refused by our Forest Service and FAA saying it’s unsafe, even though it operates all over the world with great success. In the interim, of course, untold numbers of people and animals have died horribly in these fires across our country while the fat-cat officials running our government aviation and firefighting agencies drag their feet and sip their coffee, protecting their fat paychecks, pensions and bureaucratic empires built on the charred corpses of American citizens by what morally amounts to criminal malfeasance and mass murder. A 747 pilot told me a 747 tanker would have controlled the recent widespread Yucca Valley, Calif. fire in ONE day had it been called in when the fire went out of control. Let the Congressional and legislative investigations and indictments begin and bring these bureaucratic sub-human zombies wearing human clothes to justice and meanwhile demand the extremely safe 24,000-gallon Boeing 747 (or any) Supertanker aircraft be used to save lives NOW! For we must realize the bottom line is that the 747 Supertanker firefighting system means the END of the horror of uncontrolled wildfires in our entire nation if we simply use the super tanker aircraft our own government agencies have callously denied us for at least a decade!

Sincerely, Ed Nemechek

Landers, Ca