Los Angeles Times reporter Paul Pringle has written another article about the Station fire — the fire that in 2009 burned 160,000 acres near Los Angeles and killed two LA County Fire Department firefighters. The newspaper obtained a copy of a “Large Cost Fire Review” that was commissioned by the U. S. Department of Agriculture, the department that includes the U. S. Forest Service.
Here is an excerpt:
The review states that because the Forest Service had instructed managers to hold down costs, “the decision on the Station fire to initially order only federal personnel delayed arrival of critical resources.”
Tom Harbour, head of fire and aviation for the Forest Service, said he did “not know the specifics” of the findings but suggested that the conclusion about cost worries could be “an error.” He said that all orders for crews, equipment and aircraft were filled during the first two days of the fire, which broke out Aug. 26, 2009, and burned for six weeks.
Harbour added that, given the terrain, the decision to take an indirect approach to the flames in the backcountry was sound. “That’s some really, really rugged country,” he said.
But Don Feser, former fire chief for Angeles National Forest, said the inquiry indicates that the officials who led the attack “allowed the fire to run. No action was taken in terms of aggressive perimeter control.”
The findings in the “Large Cost Fire Review,” a copy of which The Times has obtained, will be addressed by Los Angeles-area House members during a public panel Tuesday morning in Pasadena.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D- Burbank), who organized the session, said in a statement that the review “raises serious questions about whether a Forest Service policy intended to limit costs prevented the timely use of resources…. This will certainly be one of the important issues I intend to raise.”
The panel plans to interview former and current Forest Service officials and L.A. County Fire Department administrators, among others.
Comments for this article have been turned off. When the report is released, we can start a new discussion.
Mike at Guidance Group,
Many folks involved in the initial attack, extended attack, and including team management (both type 1 and type 2 teams) of the Station Fire, do not agree with the assumptions being made with the “leaked report”. Yes, there were problems… Nobody denies that.
Hopefully those assumptions are just being made by the L.A. Times and not being fostered by a supposed “impartial review” that was hindered from actually hearing all of the facts.
Also, your info on what triggers an automatic “cost review” is very outdated… Ask a federal IC.. or anyone OF US on the IC teaching cadre if you have better info.., or the WO Budget & Finance folks. There is no longer an automatic $$ threshold for review and we’ve never heard about the new level that you were contracted to perform.
A “Secretary’s Independent Panel” to review large fire costs?…. It’s new to me and never seen before… Maybe that’s why we’re having the meeting with CWCG on November 18th to figure out why there are NO MORE TYPE 1 and TYPE 2 Incident Commander candidates?
I offer it up again…. If you want to discuss the FACTS on the RECORD and not beat up the messenger… I’d be happy to. Bill has my email address.
Ken,
I hope this post (and your previous posts) do not reflect the “facts” that you keep citing.
I am beginning to wonder if we are talking about the same report. Are you sure that you are talking about the Large Fire Cost Review for FY2009? You’ve actually obtained a copy of this report and read it? judging from your comments here, I expect not.
Second, you are completely and absolutely incorrect about the Secretary of Agriculture’s Large Cost Fire Review Panel and the review process.
Every federal fire with costs over $10 million has been reviewed this way since 2005. The $10 million threshold remains.
Contact the Incident Business Program Specialist at R5-FAM, who can verify these facts for you. Emmett and I both explained this to you in earlier posts, and it is also explained in the report (that you read?)
I am not sure what facts you are offering me or why. We are not involved with the investigations of the Station Fire or the controversy surrounding it, and intend to keep it that way.
We have completed and submitted our report reviewing the costs of six fires, of which Station was one. Our understanding is that the report remains under review at both the Departments of Agriculture and Interior.
One thing I haven’t seen much of is an investigation of the lack of a comprehensive and landscape-scale fuels program on the Angeles. Doing 500 acres here and 800 acres there doesn’t cut it. Don’t blame the firefighters when this disaster was going to happen anyway.
That being said, we may actually have “dodged a bullet” in “only” losing 90+ homes and enduring two fatalities. Imagine the fire being driven by Santa Ana winds, churning westward across the San Fernando Valley, instead of burning northward, into the mountains.
This disaster was going to happen, anyway. Maybe not next year, and maybe not 5 years from now but, The stage had been set for a dozen years now. The failure was in not managing the fuels, and not protecting the public. It was inevitable that an ignition would escape, and there’s not a whole lot firefighters could do about it.
You make good points Larry. Fuels treatment gets some mention in the report, both specific to the Station Fire and more generally. The Secretary’s Independent Panel agreed, that once the Station Fire escaped, there was little anyone could do about it. The LA times and others have conveniently avoided that little piece of context.
I also think some blame should be spread towards the LA Times. Again and again, they blast Forest Service fuels-related plans, disregarding decades of fuels buildups. The Forest Service never seems to defend their plans and the public only sees the one side. The “chapparal huggers” also have an effect.
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While the Forest Service has raised the pay for Forestry Technicians, the best ones still end up pursuing higher pay elsewhere. It is hard to raise a family on GS-5 wages, especially in the LA Basin. There is not much that can be done about this pay situation, as it stands today.
Not being an LA times reader, I was largely unaware of their Forest Service coverage until just lately. Seems pretty biased. They have some excellent photographers!
Nice. I sure hope the ICT1s and ICT2s were contacted on the “cost review” of the Station Fire. (CIIMT 5, SoCal Team 2, SoCal Team 3).
Hadn’t heard a thing about the secret “cost review” until it was published in the L.A. Times article… Go figure.
For the record.. I was the Deputy IC on the 2nd team… and neither myself nor the primary IC was contacted. You might also want to contact the IC and Deputy IC of the type 1 team… and the team managing the”Station Fire” as BRANCH of the Morris Fire… because they were all equally dumbfounded by the findings of this “cost review” and assumptions that were made.
Sorry for not responding sooner… I was on DAYS OFF and trying to actually have a non-fire life.
If you want to discuss the FACTS on the RECORD… I’d be happy to. Bill has my email address.
Cost review was no secret. Has happened every year at the direction of Congress for six years. As far as I know, will happen every year for the foreseeable future. If your fire costs more than $10 million, you get a review.
In regard to the Station Fire, the Secretary’s Independent Panel interviewed the IC, Deputy IC and IC Trainee for CIMT-5 (along with the Deputy Forest Supervisor, Forest FMO and Forest Management Analyst). All right there in the report.
When setting up interviews, apparently the Forest and the Region felt that by arranging for the Secretary’s Independent Panel to interview the three ICs from CIMT-5, they had covered our request for personnel from the IMT adequately, and the panel was satisfied with both the quantity and quality of information they received.
Thanks for your offer to hear the facts as you perceive them, but no thanks. The review is complete and and the panelists seem plenty confident of the facts as they presented them.
I predict that, ultimately, the cost review report will have little bearing on the Station Fire controversy. People have stretched a few sentences from the report far beyond their context or intended purpose to suit their own aims, and everyone will start to figure that out soon enough.
Well Ken…
I’m not sure what you mean to imply here either. However, since I doubt you have seen the report, I am assuming you are just shooting in the dark here.
However, when you are able to some day see the report, you will see that (a) we did not provide analysis based on a “business model” (b) did base our findings on actual data collected both from Forest Service records and in the field. In the field, we interviewed the experts intimately involved in each of the fires reviewed – including the fire manager, the IC, the line officer and key staff.
You will also find that, of the six people who conducted the interview work in the field, four have prior fire suppression experience and two maintain current Type 2 C & G qualifications.
Not quite sure how you figure our company “has been too involved.” The government contracted for a cost review of six $20 million+ fires, we got the contract in competition and conducted the contracted cost review. Someone unknown to us made unauthorized distribution of the report to the LA Times and a group of Forest Service retirees.
So, until you have some facts and are not operating on little more than erroneous assumptions, you might want to give it a rest.
(this comment has been removed because it violates our rules for commenting.)
Ken-
Your vaguely worded comment seems to imply that [redacted]. If that is not what you meant to say, I hope you clarify your comment. If it IS what you meant to say, it is a very serious and reckless accusation… unless you have proof.
Accusations like that, without proof, are not welcome here.
HERE are the rules for commenting.
Bill,
Thank you for your standards. Why your site is well worth following!
Thanks Mike.
Ken’s comment will be removed on Oct. 15 unless he can substantiate his accusation about [redacted].
I was on the list of Subject Matter Experts (SME) for a bidder that was not selected, but feel obligated to comment on your unfounded BS about the Guidance Group and the integrity of the Review.
Congress requires in its yearly funding allocation that the Secretary of Agriculture convene an “Independent Panel” to look at these large fires, prepare him/her a report that the SecAg can send on to Congress. Although the contract was issued through the Forest Service (an Agency of the USDA), it was by it’s design “Independent” and the Report was not previewed/reviewed for content before being finalized.
The idea of the Independent Panel is to gather info/data from many different sources, consider their input and biases against the Panel’s background and experiences, and then move to INDEPENDENT findings about what happened to cause the US Taxpayers to spend more than $10 million on a single fire.
At least that was my understanding of how the system was intended to work.
Ken – were you involved in any of the meetings? Have you talked to any of the folks that were on the Independent Panel, or any of the US Forest Service and National Park folks that were part of the process? Do you have any factual basis for the comment you offer?
Looking forward to seeing the Independent Panel Report on the streets for all of us to read and decide …….
Emmett:
Thanks for your response. Yes, you have described the Cost Review process quite accurately. It was, indeed, an independent review, directed by Congress, conducted by an independent panel whose work was coordinated and managed by my company (the Guidance Group, Inc.)
You are also correct, that the Forest Service exercised no control over the content of that report and, in fact, in my estimation did an extremely admirable job in maintaining their distance along the way.
The report, when it sees the light of day, lists every person we interviewed – and I think Ken should know that, in each case, we consulted Forest Service fire managers and members of the IMTs that managed the fires – in addition to pouring over ISuite data, Key Decision Logs, the IMT’s narrative, and other hard copy data.
One clarification to my previous post, one of our panelists is actually a currently qualified OSC1 (not OSC2). I’m pretty confident our panel has the fire chops to be credible. I mean hells bells Ken, I had the former Chair of the NWCG!
I’m looking forward to seeing the report on the street as well. The report somehow found its way into the hands of the LA Times via the Forest Service retirees, and both are using a single paragraph from an 86 page report to advance their agendas. That’s cool, I guess they have to do what they feel they have to do.
However, when it comes to the Cost Review report, I’d prefer people read it themselves rather than relying on the interpretations of others or forming otherwise uninformed opinions.
Thanks Emmett, I don’t think I know you, but competitor or not, I appreciate you stepping-up in the interest of rational, informed discussion.
People have been asking us for details on the Cost Review Report that was leaked. We’ve been trying to be respectful of the very slow-moving and incredibly bureaucratic review process in D.C. We hope to be able to say more and make the report available via our web site soon.