The campaign of the County Sheriff in Colorado’s El Paso County against the fire chief responsible for the initial attack of the devastating Black Forest Fire is having an effect. Sheriff Terry Maketa has been EXTREMELY critical of Bob Harvey, the Fire Chief responsible for the first two hours of the fire.
The Colorado Springs Gazette reports that state Senator Kent Lambert of Colorado Springs is drafting a bill that “would empower county authorities to take over command during an emergency without permission or a request from the local jurisdiction”. Sheriff Maketa has complained that Chief Harvey did not turn over the management of the fire to him early enough.
Several states, including Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana, stipulate that on state and private land in unincorporated areas the County Sheriff is responsible for fires. Texas also has an archaic system, and puts a County Judge in charge of fires in some areas. These systems date back to a time when areas with sparse populations had very few government officials and little firefighting capacity of any kind. But the Sheriff was one of the first government positions filled. Now fire protection districts have sprung up in many areas that have firefighters and chief officers with far more knowledge, skills, training, and abilities related to fire suppression than the typical elected County Sheriff. Yet the laws are still on the books.
How about an alternative to Senator Lambert’s proposal. Make the local fire chief responsible for all law enforcement incidents. That would be just as logical as the current situation where the Sheriff is responsible for fires. (kidding, of course)
Thanks and a hat tip go out to Bean and Rick
As I watched a Cal Fire helicopter save numerous cabin/home yesterday (1-14-14) fighting a wildland and structures fire near San Francisco my thoughts turned toward Colorado and what, if any thing, is being done to prevent a repeat of last year? A fire program that might be of interest to Colorado which has been very successful is that both the San Diego and San Bernardino County Sheriff Departments provide the type 2 helicopter (super huey) and their sheriff pilot and Cal Fire provides the helitack captain and crew.
The colorado legislature has introduced several bills this session. Their focus is on mitigation. The Department of Fire Prevention and Control [DFPC] has a report due to the legislature.
“By April 1, 2014, the DFPC must submit to the General Assembly a report concerning the feasibility of CFAC and strategies to address state firefighting activities. This report includes budget requests for CFAC and aerial firefighting if recommended by the DFPC.” Senate Bill 13-245 [CFAC Colorado Firefighting Air Corps]
Politics to date have resulted in an unfunded state aviation program and no state interest in IA. Counties depend on local fire protection districts. Local FPD’s don’t have the $ for anything but the basics.
All 50 states have to deal with wildland fires, some to a greater extent than others, of course. But Colorado is the only state that has blatantly obvious serious problems that are due in part to the leadership at the top and the statewide organizational structure that is better suited to the late 1800s. These issues may have had an effect on the outcome of fires in the last decade or so. Since 2000, 1,769 homes have been destroyed by wildfires in Colorado — 850 in the last two years during the Black Forest and Waldo Canyon fires. The fires since 2000 have killed 8 residents and 12 firefighters.
The Lower North Fork and Waldo Canyon Fires are outstanding examples of failures of their system. Five citizens were killed at their homes in these two fires alone. How many more will die in their homes?
What they are doing now is not working. The state needs to wake up and smell the coffee. Ignoring this very serious problem will not make it go away.
If Colorado had an organization similar to CALFIRE, this entire discussion would not be taking place. As long as the state continues to abdicate any responsibility for IA problems like this will continue.
The firefighting system in Colorado is the problem.
Bean – if each of our western States had 35+ million residents and a 7-8% sales tax like California, we’d all have our own “air forces” and pay folks portal-to-portal for fire assignments: ain’t gonna happen in States with less than 1,000,000 folks and 8 months of Winter! Our reality is a strong Fed/State fire presence, with lots of local county volunteers and LE folks. It ain’t perfect, but its what we can afford and have chosen to live with!
For those who chose to live & build in the “Stupid Zone”, buy good insurance and have an evacuation plan in place.
A few points to consider …
The state of California actually supports an overwhelming IA strategy. The state of Colorado does not. Colorado state does not get involved in suppression until IA has failed and the problem is a big wildfire. The IA phase of firefighting is a “do it yourself” operation by local fire protection districts manned mostly by volunteers. On federal lands, there may or may not be sufficient IA capability.
“Strong Fed/State fire presence” … there isn’t any, especially for IA.
Money is always a problem … In 2012 California spent about $20M to run CALFIRE aviation. Colorado had no exclusive use contracts. Colorado isn’t that poor, it elected not to support local firefighters with state aviation assets.
25% of the Colorado population choses to live in the forests or in the WUI and the percentage is growing. So we should also avoid tornado, hail, and earthquake zones, flood plains, coastal hurricane zones, volcanically active zones, prairie, and tsunami areas because they are also “stupid zones”?
Read the State’s Emergency Operations Plan, the Provisional Wildfire Preparedness Plan, the Annual Operating Plan, and the appropriate state statutes and tell me that Colorado has a system in place that allows our firefighters to do their best work when it comes to keeping small fires small.
It certainly is ignorance to the legal authorities governing wildfire. The fight the Sheriff and the Chief are fighting here isn’t a case of keystone cops trying to “take over” from the fire fighting experts of the fire world. It is that the County, through the Sheriff, is responsible in the end for what happens to the entirety of a community because of a wildfire and the Sheriff believes that the Chief should have asked for more help earlier on than he did, and that if he did the Sheriff could have brought many more resources to the fight.
When a chief tells the Sheriff that he is overwhelmed, it gives the chief the full backing of the county coffers, allows for activation of the county emergency operations plan, allows disaster declarations to be made, and allows for state and federal aid to come into play. The Chief and Sheriff should work together to manage the incident and merge expertise and function. The incident and the issue is more than the fire.
Maybe fire districts should become “Disaster Agencies”. Be responsible and pay for everything. Never charge a penny, work within your existing budget, be elected instead of appointed, extend services across all state and federal land, etc. How many Fire chiefs would sign up for this?
If you combine the Disaster roles of Sheriff, OEM Director and BOCC, then based on statutory description of County Disaster services; the County is responsible and liable for EVERY incident from civil unrest to weather related to wildfire. Counties are responsible from planning through mitigation through response all the way through long term recovery. Counties operate shelters, and coordinate every aspect of every incident from beginning to end and can’t charge for a penny. The only instances this is not the case is wildfire response where districts take on initial attack and structure protection on wildfires and in public health emergencies.
For those of you who say that a Law Enforcement officer shouldn’t be in charge of a fire because they don’t know fire, how is it that Federal Wildfire IMT teams manage floods and tornadoes? What does a fire IMT know about public infrastructure like sewer systems and bridge stability? Is Fire the only incident that requires expertise?
By the way, the Feds have started sending some of the bills for wildfires to the Counties of Colorado (West Fork Complex comes to mind). Some are due to their argument that they wouldn’t have fought the fire at all if they weren’t protecting private property off in the distance and some due to districts needing to maintain IA coverage so they request crews and IMT support on backyard fires that go beyond a couple of hours. I suppose those that argue that the Sheriff shouldn’t have anything to do with wildfire would support those millions of dollars in bills should be paid by the local (mostly volunteer) fire districts. I think the pigs will fly before a Chief of a $500K budget district jumps up and asks to pay for every $10K, $50K or $30M bill that counties pay each year to cover what the districts don’t. Should we send all our bills for flood response to the fire districts too?
Look at the two versions of the time line from the Black Forest and see when you think the Chief should have asked for support from Big Brother County beyond what he had access to in the first few of hours.
Bill – you might be on to something with your statement that Fire be in charge of LE events. As we all know from NWCG/NIMS, the IC does not need to have any specific Operational knowledge as they are just the the organizer/coordinator. And we all know IC’s that can’t keep their fingers out of Operations. So, maybe having the IC come from a different arena makes sense…
At least as much sense as a NWCG IC being carded as “all-risk (hazard)” when they only have to show proficiency on a wildfire.
I live in one of those rural Colorado counties where the sheriff is the fire marshall, and I think that some commenters do not understand how the system works.
Our sheriff does NOT direct fire-fiighting operations in any way, but his deputies and volunteer posse members are, of course, highly involved with issues around evacuation, traffic control, anti-looting patrols, and the like.
Fire operations are directed by the two volunteer departments in the county, with the sheriff’s dispatcher coordinating requests for mutual aid, notifying Forest Service and BLM officials, etc.
I have — rarely — seen occasions where the sheriff overruled a Forest Service IC’s opinion regarding PRIVATE land operations, for example, deciding when to let residents return to their homes. After all, as an elected official, he wants to be liked.
What is the role of the state forest service in Colorado? Do they have IAIC responsibilities on these fires. I’ve worked in and with many of the forestry agencies in the southeast and the state forest service agencies are responsible for IC on wildland fires. It is just different to me to have a le agency if on wild land fires
All CSFS IAIC functions were passed to the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control in 2012.
Quckie question: In the Black Forest photo above, what kind of shoes are the guy with the radio wearing?
Those are boots, just ash covered so they blend in and don’t look like much.
In rural areas of New Mexico, volunteer fire departments and personnel answer to and work with county fire marshals and, as I recall, funding gets channeled down through the state and counties. Various bits of administration are done by the fire marshals, though someone more knowledgeable could fill in the specifics. But, there is a professional, county-wide person with some authority who is not primarily a law-enforcement or other non-fire person. How much does this vary in other states?
Bootsie, I sympathize with your situation and by all accounts in some areas of Colorado there is significant knowledge amongst the ranks of the LEO world. However, the crux of this situation is the kindergarden syndrome that needs to be dealt with on a local level by the local elected officials and non elected officials. Not by the media or the state. I am pretty sure this childish behavior is not rampant across the whole state necessitating a knee jerk reaction. And I do know because I used to live in Colorado till just a couple of years ago. Emmet has shed some insight on how this potential legislation can complicate things as well. This is just a bad road to go down.
Stronger relationships, agreements between the feds / state and local districts need to be established in a positive way. LEO do have a place, but taking the I’m in charge attitude whether on the legal books or not, is not how FEMA / NWCG / NIMS is supposed to work. My two cents worth, if the state of Colorado is foolish enough to pursue this level of petty legislation I hope they lose every federal grant dollar given them for non compliance with NIMS. Nowhere in NIMS or any incident management model is there a right to take over command. That, by definition is freelancing. We need to get back to a system where people are accountable for their actions. If the fire chief was not qualified as an IC3, or 2 or whatever, and should have passed command to a TEAM or higher qualified IC, some form of discipline should occur. Sounds to me that that county is not really prepared for large scale incidents. Like I stated above, it all comes back to relationships and sandboxes. Perhaps everyone needs a refresher on the Hats of Command ( http://vimeo.com/29673244). Ahhhh children….
I have seen this happen on occasion and it can get a bit ugly with rare threats of arrest. But for the most part cool heads prevail and its worked out. Perhaps it’s time fro the state of Colorado to call a meeting and refresh how ICS operates and how things run. Thirty plus years ago things were worse with unqualified command and egos running wild. Making a law is a lot less effective then internally getting the right information out to the involved people.
It’s a team effort with everyone doing what they do best and are qualified for.
Wow Bootsie – The VAST majority of fire departments in CO and the Nation are volunteer or combination departments. Training to remain current in EMS, Structure Fire, Extrication, Haz. Mat and yes wildfire is hundreds of hours a year and days and nights away from families. To diminish this level of commitment, simply because they are not monetarily compensated, by calling it a hobby, is simply wrong. Hopefully our firefighter are all professionals, some make their living of off tax payer dollars (including SO deputies) and others commit time and effort and passion while still maintaining a second job. Granted, some SO deputies have more training as they are paid to train, but many lack experience out of their jurisdiction as they are often not empowered to fight fire nationally. The solution here is highly trained wildland urban interface fire fighters, not wildland fire fighters and not structure fire fighters. CO needs wildland urban interface leadership from a public entity who’s primary passion and expertise is the UWI not leadership distracted by building more beds in the jail.
Too bad you guys have know idea what the true situation is here in Colorado. Many of the local county governments provided suppression resources and financial support to the numerous small underfunded and volunteer based fire districts. These part time firefighters can hardly maintain NWCG qualifications of their personnel and lack the knowledge to actually manage complex WUI fires.
In reality it’s the tax payer who is losing out, believing because there is a grant funded red shiny fire truck in the engine bay there are actually qualified firefighters to operate it. In addition, both the state and federal fire entities will only work directly with local government during transistion, thus making the local government even more important in the equation as federal IMTs come to help.
The ignorant understanding of our situation, legal authorities and lack of recognition of the over abused establishment of special districts is the real problem.
In many county’s, the local government, ie Sheriff, actually provides wildfirefighters training, and equipment to the local fire districts. Many deputies have more fire experince and training than these volunteer firefighters as public safety is their profession not a hobby.
Emmett
Good points…….lot of the same in the EM world. Easy to do. You know when the fire and EM world are occupations that require a deeper understaning of operations and getting things together logistically.
The attitudes of LE thinking that they got these two worlds “handled” by just sheer I am a cop attitude leaves a lot to be desired when more knowledge than criminal justice backgrounds are needed in a more scientific and operational arena……..lots more background than weapons, arrest powers, and thinking they play ICS everyday…..
These western Midwest States need to get out of the 1890’s…….makes the Good, Bad, and the Ugly look more 21st Century……
This is an issue that the citizens of each community should vote on – – – and then live with the consequences of their vote; also, the provisions of the Fed Law (Hastings & Cantwell, PL 107-203) should be in effect: screw up and be criminally liable, Sheriff Dear and/or other “Local Authorities”.
Could make IA on wildfires in Colorado VERY interesting to observe – from the Outside!
Yeah, who really needs fire people anyway when a “shoot ’em, Taser ’em, Cuff ’em Dano” guy or girl can do it all?
Now the politicians are here to save the day! How could this possibly go wrong? Don’t legislate your way around a problem. Hold people accountable if they did something wrong! Otherwise eventually you’ll have the Sheriff’s deputies doing the garbage collection. I for one don’t want to see an innocent garbage bag get tazed!….
Legislation is needed to change the outdated laws. The politician in this instance is doing the right thing.
A good example of the dark ages. Hard to believe this stuff still exists.