The fires that have been raging throughout Montenegro for days, and in which dozens of hectares of high-quality forest or centuries-old olive groves have already been destroyed, have once again shown that Montenegro is completely incapable of dealing with large-scale fire, especially in inaccessible areas where it is impossible to extinguish fires with countries.
For the umpteenth time in the last ten years, the flames have taken hundreds of millions of euros worth of forest or agricultural land, and citizens and tourists are suffocating in the smoke that daily envelops the areas tens of kilometers away from the fire, as is now the case with Boka, where For days now, he cannot live normally because of the smoke and smell of burning that comes from the fires in Cuca and Krivošija.
All this is due to the fact that the country is unwilling or unable to properly equip and train its aerial firefighting service.
Before the outbreak of this season's major fires, the Directorate for Emergency Situations (DVS) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs laconicly informed the public that this summer the state can count on only one of its firefighting aircraft of modest capabilities, without explaining why this is so.
Of the three planes, two were damaged
Namely, the pilots of the Avohelicopter Unit (AHJ) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in clearly insufficiently prepared and poorly planned firefighting flights, severely damaged two of the three "Air Tractor AT-802" firefighting aircraft (registration marks 4O- EAB and 4O-EAC), hitting trees and power lines with the wings of the plane.
Because of this, the two "Air Tractors" have been out of service for a long time and a lot of money needs to be invested to repair significant structural damage to their wings.
Although firefighting from the air is the most difficult and risky type of civil aviation, severe damage to two sets of "Air Tractors", along with the earlier complete destruction of another such aircraft due to gross pilot error on Lake Skadar, as well as the forced landing of one "PZL M-18" type aircraft dromedary" near Podgorica, in which it was also destroyed, have a very poor AHJ score for such a short period of time, which raises the question of the adequate training of AHJ pilots to carry out firefighting operations from the air.
Due to all these incidents and the multimillion-dollar damage suffered by the state on its firefighting aircraft fleet, none of the pilots or managers of AHJ have borne any responsibility or consequences, even though, for example, the case of the overturning and destruction of "Air Tractor AT-802" (4O-EAA) on Lake Skadar on July 21, 2015 was a textbook example of the violation of all possible safety protocols by the AHJ management, i.e. the pilot himself, who had previously intensively and without prescribed rest, flown on at least two other types of aircraft, one of which commercial passenger plane of the former national airline "Montenegro Airlines".
So, apart from one correct and functional "Air Tractor" (4O-EOD) which is primarily intended for pilot training because it is a two-seater with dual controls, AHJ currently has on paper one "PZL M-18 dromedary", but that plane produced in 2002 is also out of order because it needs a general overhaul of the engine and fuselage structure. Although this "dromedary" in the past 19 years has achieved a total flight of only 1.300 hours, the AHJ management is of the opinion that it is not profitable to invest in its so-called. "D-check", that is, a more serious overhaul and that "the plane should be put up for sale or taken out of service".
"There is also the possibility that the plane can be conserved and possibly preserved for an aviation museum that should be formed in the near future," it says in the AHJ development program until 2031.
Like a glass of water on a big fire
Although the AHJ also carries out firefighting tasks from the air, in that document, which was adopted by the Government at the session on June 3, there is no mention of this segment of the operations of that unit of the MUP, nor of the state's strategy on how to finally solve the problem of firefighting from the air, instead of settling for cheaper semi-solutions in the form of buying a "dromedary" from almost 20 years ago, or something like an "Air Tractor" that proved to be very ineffective in our conditions and with our way of using those aircraft. These days, the example of the fires on Durmitor or around Nikšić shows how completely ineffective the new and expensive "Bell 412 EPI" helicopters of the Army of Montenegro are for extinguishing even more serious and raging forest fires. Despite the great efforts and efforts of their crews who used the so-called bambi-bucket fire-fighting suspended buckets with a capacity of 1.500 liters of water each, threw up to a total of 55 tons of water on fire sites per day, the military "Bellovi 412" proved to be as effective as trying to extinguish a raging fire in a fireplace with a glass of 2 deciliters of water.
Due to the coincidence of circumstances and the misfortune that almost every summer in the past ten years it has burned more or less, Montenegro had the opportunity to see and compare in practice how they work and what are the effects achieved by several different firefighting aircraft, some domestic, some foreign in the past years, to help us not to burn out completely, various countries sent us: from the huge Soviet heavy transport aircraft "Ilyushin Il-76D" in the variant of a fire-fighting tanker, through the Soviet medium-heavy transport aircraft "Antonov An-32P" also in the variant of a fire-fighting tanker , through domestic and foreign "dromedaries" and "Air Tractors", helicopters of the type "Bell 412", "Kamov Ka-32" and "Aerospatiale AS-322 super puma", to the absolute champion in that activity - the firefighting aircraft of the type "canadair CL -415T” (canader). It was these last ones, which neighboring Croatia sent to us on a couple of occasions to help put out the fires in Boka, proved to be the undisputed masters of controlling fire from the air, and the effects of their action, even on the biggest fires that raged on Luštica in the summer of 2017, they were the fastest noticeable and most effective.
Two Croatian Canadians saved Luštica in three hours
On the afternoon of July 415, 20, in the afternoon of July 2017, XNUMX, two "Canadair CL-XNUMXT" of the Croatian Army, in just about three hours of action, literally extinguished the fire that was descending from Obosnik towards the villages of Zabrđe and Petrovići on Luštica, which had previously The "Air Tractors" of the Montenegrin AHJ could not do anything.
This is all the sooner, since after the accident of the "Air Tractor" on Lake Skadar in 2015, the managers of the AHJ made a "wise" decision to use the remaining one such aircraft, which we had in the seaplane, so-called Fire Boss variant, they remove the floats and turn it into a "regular" plane with landing gear with wheels and thus give up the basic advantage of that plane - the quick purchase of water into the tanks from the sea and lake while the seaplane "glides" on the water surface. Instead of Fire Boss, Montenegro bought the next two new "Air Tractors" in the so-called land variant, without floats, with landing gear on wheels and thereby "condemned" those planes to have to descend to the airport every time when extinguishing a fire and then refuel with water from the fire cisterns. This significantly increases the intervals between the release of "water bombs" on the fire scene and thereby reduces the already debatable effectiveness of the "Air Tractor" in extinguishing fires in Montenegro.
On the other hand, the significantly larger "canadair CL-415T", in addition to its larger capacity (6.300 liters of seawater plus 400 liters of foam), compared to helicopters and "Air Tractors" that carry from 1.500 to 3.000 liters of water, has a decisive advantage in the speed with which it works. Namely, "Canadair" does not have to descend to the airport after throwing each "water bomb", as is the case with the Montenegrin "Air Tractors", nor wait until the fire bucket is filled with water, which is used by helicopters to put out the fire. "Canadair" quickly buys water in its tanks during 12 seconds of gliding on the sea, and its "delivery" of about 6,5 tons of fire-fighting mixture on the ground covers an area of 60 by 200 meters, which quickly and effectively suppresses the fire. "Canadair" delivers its "water bomb" from an extremely low height of only about 30 meters above the ground, which makes it extremely precise and effective in fighting fire.
One "canadair" is ten times more effective than the entire Montenegrin firefighting aviation
"Canadair CL-415T" is 19,8 meters long, has a wingspan of 28,6 meters and weighs almost 13 tons empty. During just 12 seconds of gliding on the water surface at a speed of 130 kilometers per hour, the CL-415 collects over 6 tons of water in its tanks, and in order to do this, it only needs a 410-meter-long and at least 2-meter-deep "belt of water" (rivers , lakes or seas).
The last copy of this plane was produced at the end of 2015, since then its manufacturer, the Canadian company "Bombardier Aerospace", has not received any new orders. However, the CL-415 lives on because the company sold its designs, license and production equipment to a small Canadian company called Wiking, which already produces DHC Twin Otter seaplanes, and is ready to restart production of the Canadair. In the meantime, its new variant called "CL-515 First Responder" was developed, which has about 15% more efficiency than the current CL-415, carries a ton more water than the current model and has the most modern avionics and so-called full glass cockpit.
The price of CL-515 is less than 50 million dollars per piece, and six such planes have already been ordered by Indonesia and will be delivered to it in 2024.
How superior the "Canadair" is as a means of extinguishing fires from the air is also shown by its comparison with the aircraft that Montenegro is currently using: one CL-415 can drop up to 115 "water bombs" on a fire, i.e. soak the fire area with as many as 690 tons of water. At the same time, one "bell 412" with a well-trained crew can throw only 49 "water bombs" with a total of about 50 tons of water, while one "Air Tractor" in Montenegrin conditions with landing at the airport, can make a maximum of 20 rounds and throw them on the fire less than 65 tons of water. This means that the AHJ of the MUP of Montenegro currently, under the best conditions, has capacities at the level of less than one tenth of what only a "canadair" would do here.
Pilots of the Air Helicopter Unit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs last year and this year, in clearly insufficiently prepared and poorly planned flights, seriously damaged two of the three "Air Tractor AT-802" type firefighting aircraft by hitting trees and power lines with the wings of the aircraft
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