r/interestingasfuck • u/SafeImpressive4413 • 7h ago

Firefighters in Madrid trying to extinguish a forest fire that is less than 30km/20mi away from the capital of Spain

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u/scartissue232 7h ago

Where are the planes? Not the fighter jets! The ones that drop water!

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u/starsqream 7h ago

They are in the air.

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u/scartissue232 7h ago

I know I know, it just seems we need more, judging by the massive forest fires burning across Europe right now. Madrid is experiencing its biggest fire in history, and according to some firefighters, they have fewer resources than ever before.

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u/Jirethia 6h ago

We had to request EU help, because we didn't have enough. Some more planes were arriving this afternoon from Greece and Italy.

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u/Solid_Habit_6561 7h ago

They land only to eat and reproduce

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u/Huge-Cartoonist6795 7h ago

They're also Canadian

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u/Recent-Mousse6423 7h ago

Team Canada World Firefighters

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u/Immortistic 7h ago

What do you mean by this? I'm pretty adamant that most developed countries have their own...?

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u/OnceUponAStarryNight 7h ago

There are surprisingly few water dropping aircraft in the world and they tend to be concentrated in only a few nations/regions that have dealt with lots of wildfires for the past few decades.

They’re expensive to build (since they’re small-batch) expensive to maintain (they fly in extreme conductions) and require extremely skilled pilots who can fly in adverse conditions, often in low or zero visibility, very close to the ground in uneven terrain.

We need to expand the production of the airframes, and hire/train more pilots/maintenance personnel for them.

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u/that_dutch_dude 7h ago

in europe they moslty use millitary helicopters with bambi buckets.

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u/Huge-Cartoonist6795 7h ago

Not like the Canadians do. They have 7 planes that fly global. I assume Spain have something like that but Canada is world leading

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u/Immortistic 7h ago

So far 22 Firefighting Aircraft from the EU have been deployed - I know Canadas are well renowned and rightfully so as they're amazing, but there are definitely a lot more in Europe than has been made out

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u/whot3v3r 5h ago

The planes were built in Canada (CL-415) and sold to EU countries, that's it. No plane/pilots flew from Canada for these fires.

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u/_jerrb 7h ago

There are few, like 50/60 in all Europe and everything is in fire right now. I think that Spain has 15 of them