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Canadian air tanker fighting Australia bushfires crashes, killing three

11 Comments
By Sonali Paul and Colin Packham

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11 Comments
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Very sad news. When C-130 goes down it had to have been a major malfunction.

The C-130 is a very reliable tanker and aircraft. Americans too. Lending a hand to our Australian brothers and sisters. Praying for you Australia. Pray and pray for more rains come soon.

May these three souls rest in peace.

10 ( +10 / -0 )

Many respects to them.

8 ( +8 / -0 )

These men travel halfway around the world and risk their lives to help people they don't even know.

Those guys do a tremendous job. A very dangerous one. Terribly sad. Condolences to family and friends.

8 ( +8 / -0 )

An absolute tragedy. Rest in Peace to these brave men. They died trying to save lives, and they will be forever heroes to Australians.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

Since September, hundreds of wildfires in Australia have killed 29 people as well as an estimated 1 billion native animals

This is a disaster of epic proportions. Respect to those who have given their lives trying to save others.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

A tragedy.

And a risk that air tanker and heli tanker crews knowingly run every day, something that makes them true heroes.

Flying heavily weighted, at low altitudes, almost always in low visibility, on ever changing flightpaths, with other planes and helicopters doing the same thing, and being the ones responsible for avoiding midair collisions and smashing the people on the ground with the loads of water you are dropping is risky, stressful, and exhausting work even without the long hours. The stresses and strains on the aircraft are also extreme, going from maximum loads to almost no load at all hundreds of times a day, without the ground inspections that normal aircraft get each time they're loaded and unloaded bring additional risks.

As someone who lives in a fire zone, and could hear the planes and helicopters taking off every morning, the drone of the air tankers passing low overhead as they did the precautionary overflight of our airport (no radar, no on site air and ground traffic controllers) every evening brought comfort because the number matched the morning takeoff.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

I pray for them.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

As has been said, the C-130 is an especially reliable aircraft, and crashes are extremely rare. I was for awhile part of the 146th TAW, and we had many C-130s, some of them used in the fire-fighting role (before Reagan privatized aerial fire-fighting). The only time I heard about them crashing was after sustaining damage in combat in Vietnam. Compared to other planes used in the fire-fighting role, they are, IMO, the absolute safest plane to be in, when maintained to proper standards.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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