Move the 5,200 military from border to California to help fight the fires

[independentusa]

With a week of training the military that is presently "guarding" the border could be used to help fight forest fires in California and other Western states. Would be a much better use of these men and women than sitting around along the border doing little other than stringing barb wire. Right now we are going to spend over 200 million dollars for trump's folly.

 

[Chomsky]

With a week of training the military that is presently "guarding" the border could be used to help fight forest fires in California and other Western states. Would be a much better use of these men and women than sitting around along the border doing little other than stringing barb wire. Right now we are going to spend over 200 million dollars for trump's folly.

I think this is a fair point.

 

[Chillfolks]

Not a totally bad idea but I don't think you could train them in a week to safely fight these fires. With the speed these fires are moving it would be easy for untrained personal to be caught in the path, or make things worse for the trained professionals

Using Navy personnel whom do have some decent training on fire fighting would be a better solution but I don't think there are a lot of Navy on boarder duty.

 

[mike2810]

I think this is a fair point.

If you want to consider the point came from someone I bet has little to no fire management experience.

- It takes approximately 5 days from the time the decision is made to use military personnel till they can be utilized on a fire.
- More importantly it is national policy that "prior to military assets being mobilized, all civilian resources must be assigned either to active fires or to initial attack. "
The US is far from having all wildland fire resources deployed.
https://www.predictiveservices.nifc.gov/intelligence/military/Military_Use_Handbook_2006_2.pdf

The Incident Commander and staff (Fire Teams) are very capable in determining what resources they need to meet objectives. With the type of fire behavior the Camp fire and some of the other fires have exhibited you cannot do direct attack of the fire. So additional "boots on the ground" would not do much good. Even structural engines were not able to get in to some of the subdivisions due to the fire behavior.

My bet once the winds drop the existing fire resources will make short work of the Camp fire and the others that are burning.

Besides, does the OP believe that the 5000 troops along the southern border has really depleted the military forces that the military could not come up with more to fight fires?

 

[Casca XV]

With a week of training the military that is presently "guarding" the border could be used to help fight forest fires in California and other Western states. Would be a much better use of these men and women than sitting around along the border doing little other than stringing barb wire. Right now we are going to spend over 200 million dollars for trump's folly.

Without Leftist Democrat Stupidity neither the Border or Fires would be a problem.

 

[Skeptic Bob]

I’m not sure if the logistics would be workable but I like the concept.