@fluffy @11112011

> how do we know this is true?

It's their policy. Years ago, they used to call sending in the helicopter to dump flame retardant a "CNN drop": it gave the news guys something to do, but it's not a particularly effective method. At some point around ten years back, they changed their policy, brush-clearing was almost eliminated and no more controlled burns. So brush piles up, there are more fires, the fires are worse, they start asking for more retrofitted Chinooks, budget goes up.

The hills have basically always caught fire here. It's been happening for so long that there's a species of pine here that drops cones that don't even open until they're burned, so that the seeds can take root when there's less competition. It's a dry area.

I'm a bit busy to dig up the specific figures and when it happened, but if I were to do this, I'd start by downloading the county budget breakdowns (they'll be somewhere; lacounty.gov will either have them or have links to where to find them) to figure out when it happened. (If the budget is a pain, helicopter ownership is public, so you could figure out which helicopters they own and when they were purchased, then check, like, FlightAware or something, see when the frequency of flights by LAFD-owned helicopters went up. They're big, two-rotor Chinooks that are retrofitted to do drops, so they are costly to maintain, meaning flight frequency impacts budget, and costly to procure, so size of the fleet is a good indicator.) The minutes from all of the county board meetings are public, obviously their press releases are public, so you could find them discussing the budget in there, I'd start around the time they got more helicopters and then work backwards through one or two wildfire breakouts (which would be the optimal time for them to ask for more money). I'm not sure where the LAFD department policies are hosted but that shouldn't be too hard to find (and might be mentioned in press releases). If you're used to navigating that kind of thing, I think it would take maybe an hour or two.