Cfr / arff
 

The asiana mishap thread had a few posts regarding the complexities of the firefighting missions and challenges faced (and whether some of the criticism was deserved or not). This article does a fairly good job of expressing some of the issues at work.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/09/us...rils.html?_r=1&

Interesting article. Of note is that the FAA mandates only the number of trucks and not the staffing. SFO is well staffed, and it made a difference in the Asiana accident. Firefighters were able to enter the fuselage prior to flashover and effect rescues. Many airports, even large airports across the US are poorly staffed.

For example, the airport I often fly out of, BDL, is staffed with minimum firefighters on each shift. The ARFF trucks themselves are staffed driver only. They would be hard pressed to perform the same rescues as were made in SFO, simply because there just aren't enough of them on shift.

Would be nice if they mandated staffing. But hey, that's expensive ya know........