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Why not?  Anyone hear about the 747s they're converting into a firefighting airplane.  Maybe they were waiting for that.

In June 1998, Flagler Country in northeast Florida was ablaze. Fires were so bad the Daytona 500 had to be cancelled. Half-a-million acres were eventually devastated and several hundred homes destroyed. A standard criticism about the IL-76 is that it won't work in mountain areas: Flagler County is pancake flat.

On June 22, EMERCOM made an offer to then-Gov. Lawton Chiles to bring in the Waterbomber and a crew. The plane would have been in Florida within 48 hours, Robinson said. All the Russians asked was that the state cover the costs of fuel and maintenance for the aircraft and food and lodging for the crew. A cap of $500,000 for 30 days was placed on the mission.

At first, everything seemed to be moving without a hitch. The state of Florida said OK. Both the Federal Aviation Agency and the State Department gave their approval. The Florida Air National Guard was going to host the aircraft and its crew at Patrick Air Force Base.

Suddenly the governor decided against the offer, and the whole thing fell through.

At a press briefing Chiles tried to justify his decision. "The Forest Service told me that the plane was so big and carries so much water it would destroy homes and kill the firefighters," he said.

James Harrison is a battalion chief with the Santa Barbara Co. Fire Dept. in southern California. In his nearly 40-year career as a firefighter he's fought both structure fires and wildfires.

Asked if he thought the amount of water discharged is not really a good thing, Harrison laughed.

"I know the Forest Service disagrees with me, and I disagree with them," he said. "Whichever. But I don't understand why there's anything other than a political reason that I'm not aware off of that we wouldn't at least bring that plane over here and try it."

Robinson said that two years ago during the Cerro Grande fire near Los Alamos, EMERCOM had two planes sitting on the runway in Moscow, fully crewed, each plane having three eight-man crews, ready to take off. They had been requested by FEMA, but at the last minute, FEMA told them they weren't needed after all.

The Associated Press reported that then-District IX FEMA director Buddy Young went to the fire and publicly announced, "You will not bring the Russian planes in here: We're not having any Russians coming here and fighting our fires."