As we reported on August 6, the two California U.S. senators and several local House members signed a letter asking the Government Accountability Office to look into the management of last year’s Station fire that burned 160,000 acres and killed two firefighters near Los Angeles.
The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, has now agreed to investigate the U. S. Forest Service’s decisions and tactics during the early stages of the fire. There has been criticism that their anemic response to the fire, and their failure to fill firefighters’ requests for air tankers on the morning of the second day of the fire, led to the fire growing from a small fire that morning to the largest fire in the history of Los Angeles County — and the deaths of two firefighters from the Los Angeles County Fire Department.
The U. S. Department of Agriculture’s Inspector General is also investigating the Forest Service’s failure to release recordings of telephone calls radio transmissions related to the fire after they were twice requested by the LA Times using the Freedom of Information Act. The probe by the IG could result in criminal charges, much like their investigation of the Thirtymile wildfire led to felony criminal charges resulting in a firefighter being sentenced to 90 days in a work-release facility and 3 years of probation.
Now that the U.S. Forest Service is being accused of a timid, low-budget response to the Station fire, and a possible coverup of damning evidence which may lead to that conclusion, we can speculate about what if any changes will become standard operating procedure in the wake of this sad episode. Will a knee-jerk reaction be to dispatch the world’s firefighters to every fire that escapes initial attack? Fire administrators, or the ‘ologists who run fire programs in the U.S. Forest Service and other federal agencies, will have nightmares about being in the same shoes that officials at the Angeles National Forest, and the Regional and National USFS offices find themselves in now. Being subpoenaed to testify about your screwups before congressional committees, the GAO, and the Inspector General could keep a person awake at night. Not to mention going to prison, after the Inspector General gets done mucking around.
Here is an excerpt from an article written on the subject by Char Miller, director of the environmental analysis program at Pomona College, and author of “Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism.”
Referring to the Station fire and it’s afermath:
…Its blackened acres have become an in-your-face warning to firefighting agencies across the state. So have congressional hearings that charged the Forest Service with mismanagement and media investigations that unearthed damning evidence about a possible cover-up. Because no agency head wants to endure such public scrutiny, because no one wants to bear witness to the anguish of burned-out communities, every fire now is going to get hit hard.
This is not the smartest response. Not all fires must be controlled; some are essential to maintain ecosystem health. Not all firefighting makes economic sense, either. While the commitment to protect human life is non-negotiable, Californians must become a lot smarter about where they choose to live. If they decide to reside in fire zones, they need to learn how to safely inhabit those areas so as not to endanger the lives of those racing to their rescue.
In the immediate aftermath of the Station Fire, however, these cautionary insights have been lost. Now that fire has become so politicized, whenever and wherever sparks fly, a small army of firefighters will storm in and flame-retardant will rain down.
In addition to an internal investigation by the Inspector General’s office, now the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has been asked to investigate the U. S. Forest Service’s management of last summer’s Station fire that burned 160,000 acres near Los Angeles and claimed the lives of two Los Angeles County Fire Department firefighters.
The two California U.S. senators and several local House members signed a letter asking the GAO to “ensure that all actions in the response to the fire were taken swiftly, properly and competently”.
The GAO was asked to look into that issue as well as another revolving around recordings of telephone conversations made during the fire in the dispatch center. While it is common for dispatch centers to record radio conversations, the GAO will look into the legality of recording phone conversations without the consent of both parties. The Los Angeles Times requested the recordings last year and again this year, but Forest Service officials said they did not exist.
The Times on Wednesday obtained a copy of an internal USFS memorandum in which Forest Service Deputy Chief James Hubbard ordered all dispatch centers to stop recording calls until the matter is resolved.
You have to wonder if this mess the Forest Service is now wallowing in would have been any different, if instead of hiding their heads in the sand, their November report on the fire had been an honest and open appraisal of the management of the fire. It could have been an opportunity for learning lessons, but now it has gone nuclear, sweeping the Forest Service up into a mushroom cloud of distrust, criticism, and multiple investigations, possibly even leading to criminal charges against firefighters or fire administrators. The agency that I used to work for, or at least the Angeles National Forest, has become an embarrassment.
New information about the management of the first 36 hours of the Station fire near Los Angeles continues to be unearthed. And much of it does not put the U.S. Forest Service in a good light. Last summer the fire burned 160,000 acres and killed two Los Angeles County Fire Department firefighters.
Here is an excerpt from an article published today at the L. A. Times:
The U.S. Forest Service has launched an inspector general’s investigation and invited Congress to order a broad inquiry into last summer’s disastrous Station fire, after the recent discovery that dispatch recordings from the critical early hours of the blaze were withheld from The Times and a federal review team.
The inspector general’s probe will focus on why several days worth of recordings were not provided to The Times under the Freedom of Information Act or turned over to a Forest Service inquiry that had concluded the agency’s initial attack on the fire had been proper.
“I find this very serious,” Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell told The Times on Tuesday. “I’m very concerned and troubled that this was not found earlier….We want to get this information to learn what occurred on the Station fire.”
Tidwell said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack invited Congress to request the fuller investigation of the Forest Service’s handling of the Station fire, a probe that would be conducted by the Government Accountability Office.
The content of the withheld recordings is not known. Tidwell said officials were still transcribing them and the results would be released in coming days.
He said the recordings were found after he ordered a reexamination of the agency’s response to The Times’ requests for copies of audio dispatch communications.
Next Tuesday, August 10, there will be a local congressional hearing on the Station Fire, organized by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank, CA). It will be held at 10 a.m. at the Volush Forum at Pasadena City College, 1570 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA. The panel will discuss issues that have been raised about the decision-making in the early hours of the Station fire. It is free and open to the public.
UPDATE @ 1:50 p.m. MT, Aug. 5, 2010
As Ken mentioned in a comment, the local congressional hearing has been postponed because the House of Representatives, which had been on recess, is being called back into session, creating a conflict for the Representatives that had planned on attending.
Paul Pringle, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, continues to uncover details about the management of last summer’s Station fire on the Angeles National Forest in southern California. The U. S. Forest Service has been criticized for an anemic commitment of resources on August 27, the second day of the fire, specifically not assigning a significant number of air resources until mid-morning. In the most recent article, dated today, an Air Attack Group Supervisor that was over the fire at 7 a.m. on day two reported that the fire was three to four acres at that time. His pleas for air tankers were rebuffed, and later that morning the fire took off, eventually killing two Los Angeles County firefighters and burning 160,000 acres.
Here is an excerpt from the article.
Just after first light, a tactical observation plane took off from its old military base in Hemet for an urgent mission above the cathedral peaks of the Angeles National Forest.
The two-man crew had been deployed to direct an air assault on the few acres of brush still burning on Day 2 of last summer’s Station fire, which had been nearly contained the evening before.
As the crew prepared for the arrival of three or more air tankers, conditions appeared good for knocking the blaze down once and for all. Winds were calm, and the sun had yet to rise above the pine-crowned mountaintops to heat the thick carpet of chaparral where the fire had flared overnight.
Capt. Perri Hall, a veteran air attack officer for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, who was over the blaze minutes before 7 a.m. on Aug. 27, radioed the U.S. Forest Service with the intention of bringing in the tankers, a lead plane and helicopters.
There was no answer.
“I made several attempts to contact someone on the ground … with no luck,” Hall recounts in a report. “I then attempted to make contact with [the Angeles National Forest] on the command frequencies.”
The minutes were passing.
“I finally was able to make contact … and ask for the lead plane to be started ASAP,” he says. “They advise the lead plane would not be available until 0900 hours.
“I then ask to start any air tankers they had and again I was told nothing available until 0900-0930 hours. “I then ask if there were any heli-tankers available and if so get them started. Again I was told nothing available until 0930 hours.
“I gave them a quick report on conditions of 3-4 acres [burning] … with potential of a major fire.”
That potential began turning into reality about an hour later. The fire jumped a critical defense line along Angeles Crest Highway and raced through the dried-out scrub and trees, becoming the biggest conflagration in Los Angeles County history. Two county firefighters were killed.
Through the Freedom of Information Act, the LA Times obtained copies of recordings of radio conversations from day two of the fire.
On one recording, a Forest Service officer is heard calling at 3:10 a.m. for confirmation of a request made more than two hours earlier for three tankers and other aircraft to be over the blaze at 7 a.m. He is told that the order had been placed and that the Forest Service is “going to see at morning time if we can get [the aircraft] reassigned from the Morris” fire burning nearby.
At 6:49 a.m., on another recording, an officer asking about the lead plane is informed that it would “hold along with the tankers for now.”
The Forest Service has blamed the tardy arrival of the tankers on the need for pilots to rest and a lack of available relief planes. But The Times has reported that according to federal records and state officials, the Forest Service failed to fill the order for tankers that its commander placed shortly before 1 a.m. on Day 2, even though Cal Fire had several of the planes available.
Former Forest Service officials say Hall’s account and the recordings seem to confirm that a separate order for the Station fire tankers was never filled and that the agency had instead opted to wait for planes that had been used the day before on the Morris blaze. Those tankers did not begin taking off until after 8:40 a.m.
“The problem wasn’t the lack of resources,” said former Angeles National Forest Fire Chief Don Feser. “The problem was the lack of will to acquire the resources…. I don’t see any real sense of urgency.”
Meanwhile, as Hall’s narrative continues, he pleads in vain for more planes and other support:
“I made three requests for the DC-10 (Tanker 910) … and all three were denied. I made two requests for a [helicopter coordinator to help manage the attack] with no fill.”
In November the USFS issued a report that analyzed the early stages of the fire and concluded that:
Additional resources during the evening of August 26 [the day the fire started] and morning of August 27 would not have improved the effectiveness of operations during that operational period and would have resulted in needless exposure of firefighters to the hazards of wildland fire.
During the Station fire near Los Angeles last year, a remote wildlife video camera photographed the fire as it burned around the camera and consumed the vegetation in a canyon. It also photographed a mountain lion before the fire, and some bears after the fire passed through. Very cool.
I believe the fire video was captured on August 28.
