On August 9, 1999, six members of a 20-person National Park Service hand crew made up of “militia” personnel, not full time firefighters, became entrapped in the Sadler Fire near Elko, Nevada. The six that were entrapped were transported to a hospital. Two of them had second degree burns on their faces and necks and some were coughing severely. Three people were admitted to the hospital and remained there overnight before being released the next day. They were expected to fully recover.
The work environment that enabled the entrapment was created from a stunning number of mistakes, oversights, errors in judgement, and sheer laziness in incident management.
After the investigation, the Type 1 Incident Management Team was disbanded and five members of the Command and General Staff had their qualifications pulled until they could be recertified.
This is one of the rare examples that we have heard about where very serious, inexcusable, life-threatening errors resulted in real negative consequences for those responsible. Of course it is likely that due to privacy regulations, we do not hear about disciplinary action that may take place behind the scenes.
The new draft is similar in some respects to the last version, however there are some very important differences. Thankfully, THANKFULLY, this latest version REPEALS the terrible, ill-advised, Hastings Cantwell Act, PL 107-203 of 2002 which requires that all fatalities of U. S. Forest Service (USFS) personnel on a wildland fire be investigated by the Department of Agriculture Inspector General’s office. The IG investigators in the DoA are far over their heads when it comes to assigning blame and evaluating tactics and strategy on a wildland fire. Their skill set is best suited for investing fraud at chicken ranches and food additive companies. Under the Hastings Cantwell Act these law enforcement officers are tasked with digging out violations of the law among firefighters with the possibility of sending them to jail for split-second decisions made in the heat of battle. Ellreese Daniels was a victim of this Act, following decisions he made on the Thirtymile fire.
The legislation that the FWFSA championed last year did not repeal the Hastings Cantwell Act — it doubled down on it. They wanted to EXPAND the act to include the land management agencies in the Department of Interior in addition to the USFS. We are pleased that the FWFSA has reversed course on this very important firefighter liability issue.
Firefighters should be held accountable for their actions but sending them to jail is not the answer. The Sadler fire is an example where some good decisions were made after the fire, following some terrible ones that were made during the fire.
Other changes in the draft bill over last year’s version include:
There is no mention of the firefighter mandatory retirement age. The previous bill raised it to 65.
The section about prohibiting outsourcing was deleted.
It includes a new section about stove-piping the chain of command for fire management personnel. It would “remove Line Officer authority for Wildland Fire Preparedness and Suppression and reestablish that authority in the order of Chief of the FS (for the Forest Service), Director of FAM, Regional Directors for FAM, Forest Fire Management Officers to District Fire Management Officers. In the case of Department of Interior agencies, a similar structure will be developed.”
The most striking and controversial feature of the bill, which was also in last year’s version, is the three-year pilot program for portal-to-portal pay, which would enable firefighters to be paid 24 hours a day while they are on fire assignments:
…the hours of work officially ordered or approved in excess of 40 hours per week or 8 hours per day shall be considered overtime work, inclusive of all time the firefighter is away from their official duty station assigned to an emergency incident…
Wildfire Today supports this legislation in it’s present form.
A rocket scientist who calls himself “old coyote” wrote a ridiculous post on another wildland fire web site about accountability. He or she was offering an opinion about the disciplinary actions that were taken after the accident in which eight members of the Klamath Hot Shots were injured when their crew carrier was hit by a semi truck and rolled over on August 22, 2009 in northern California. According to rumors on that site, some members of the overhead on the hot shot crew were forced to take some time off as a result of their actions or inactions related to the cause of the injuries, reportedly for some members of the crew not wearing seat belts. “Old coyote” wrote:
When you think about it, the personnel actions fall right in line with the fall-out from the Sadler Fire. Now, why did practically a whole platoon of team overhead lose their quals due to an independent decision of a certain dumb-ass Crew Boss?
For the December/January 1999-2000 issue of Wildfire magazine (vol 9, no. 1) I wrote an analysis of the findings from the Sadler fire investigation report. I was moved to write the analysis due to the unique nature of the August, 1999 incident. The sheer number of errors in judgement that were made on that fire were astounding. Never before or since have I been aware of a large fire being run by a Type 1 Incident Management Team where so many poor decisions were made that seriously and adversely affected the safety of firefighters.
To imply that the single cause of the entrapment on the fire was the fault of a “dumb-ass Crew Boss”, or that the IMTeam should not be held accountable, is absurd.
The head of the Sadler fire approaching the backfiring operation.
The Incident Action Plan written by the Type 1 IMTeam for the Sadler fire stated that the tactics for every Division that day “will be announced at briefing”. And, neither the Division Supervisor nor the Branch Director were given copies of the written plan.
The strategy of backfiring from a dozer line out ahead of the fire that was developed by the Branch Director was presented to two hot shot crews by the Division Supervisor, but the crews refused the assignment. The Crew Boss of a Type 2 crew of National Park Service regular employees accepted it. They were not a full time organized crew.
The entrapment happened to six members of the crew as they were igniting the backfire along the dozer line in grass and sage vegetation. There were no lookouts posted, and unexpectedly to the firing team, the head of the main fire overran their location.
The entire article as it appeared in Wildfire is on our Documents page, but below are some excerpts, including a long list of some of the mistakes, errors in judgement, and sheer laziness in emergency management that were exposed in the report.
