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.
I think they did everything he could. U can’t catch spot fires on 80% slope in So Cal. Had nothing to do with management, but history. Alot of firefighters have died in that exact same place where the fire started doing the exact same thing. LA times is just trying to sell papers.
“us”:
Refresh my memory. Which fatal fire or fires occurred in the exact same place ?
The Congressional Field Hearing has been postponed.
Until the Agency returns to the basic premise of Fire Safety and begins to recruit and train professionals to manage their incidents, this type of event will continue to occur. Honesty, Integrity and Leadership are the important ingrediants of any program. Too many employees are concerned with CYA and what’s in it for me. Supervisors spend too much time at their computer screens rather than managing and supervising.
Audio recordings from dispatch center phone calls (ie 911 calls) and from radio transmissions are standard operating practices in communication centers.
I wonder if this is what all of the hoopla is about?