Using An Air Tanker For The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge: STUPID. Yet, Someone Did It…


Using An Air Tanker For The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge: STUPID. Yet, Someone Did It…

I read the story, then I had to do a Google hunt to find other stories to make sure this wasn’t a joke. Surely, nobody was dumb enough to commission a freaking air tanker to dump a load of water on them just for a #viral_video, right? Yeah…”There is nothing foolproof to the sufficiently talented fool”. In this case, our fool is 51 year old Bruno Brokken, a Belgian photographer. Brokken arranged for a Spanish air tanker to fly over him and douse him with water as he filmed his Ice Bucket Challenge video. How much water? Oh, about 400 gallons ought to do it, right?

Here’s the math: 400 U.S. Gallons x 8.34 lb/gal= 3,338.1 lbs. Or, in rough terms, the weight of a NASCAR, with full load of fuel. Dropped right on his head.

I’ve worked in wildfire control before. I watched as a co-worker got too close to the drop zone of a 100gal Bambi bucket and got absolutely pummeled to the ground. And while being hit on the head by a fairly large bass falling from about 70 feet certainly didn’t help anything, the water alone did enough damage that we had to send him to the local hospital for an evaluation. Brokken was hit with four times that amount, at speed. And the aircraft was (get this) 22 feet above him when it dumped a backyard pool’s worth of water on him. Luckily he was only knocked unconscious and after testing to see if there were any internal injuries, Brokken is expected to make a full recovery.

Next person that wants to pull this stunt is required to use the Evergreen Supertanker. Agreed?

planefirefighting


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10 thoughts on “Using An Air Tanker For The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge: STUPID. Yet, Someone Did It…

  1. john

    As a retired school teacher I held many part time jobs. One of my bosses once asked ” What happens to your (forgive me) stupid kids?” The answer was simple, “They don’t get any smarter , just older”.

  2. John T

    not being picky but….you’ve shown 2 photos of two different air tankers, neither of which is 22 feet off the ground or dropping water on an idiot. Surely if this guy was going to this much trouble it got video’d? Just did a youtube search and got nothing…..

    1. mooseface

      Either A: he has not regained a sufficient state of consciousness enough to edit and post the video, or B: his camera was smashed smashed to bits/saturated beyond recovery.

  3. Jody

    I believe with information supplied, I’m going to call this a bogus story. If this actually did happen, there are severe inaccuracies in the details.

    Something with the mass of an air tanker, moving at speed, at only 22ft of elevation, would send you on a wild ride in itself.

    But let’s say you could stand thru it.

    Now your down to the pilots skill and the mass of the water.

    At only 22ft of elevation, moving at speed, even for an experienced pilot it would nearly impossible to hit a target as small a human being with any efficiency, with only 400gal of water.

    400gal may sound like a lot to the lay person, but in the fire service it’s not much at all (less than 20 sec of flow on a ladder truck). In the world of air tankers it would be useless, due to the dispersion caused by the velocity of the aircraft.

    Now that’s not saying that air tanker drops are safe to stand under or in any way diminishing the skill of their pilots, it’s an impressive sight when you’re in the woods to see these men perform drops.

    But if this did actually happen, the details have been fiercely blown out of proportion.

  4. BeaverMartin

    Great now there will be another “challenge” going around to raise money for this idiot’s medical bills

  5. Schtauffer

    Ok, so my plans to dump water on myself using a Euc has been one-upped before I managed to get it done. Oh well…

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