NTSB issues report about crash of night-flying helicopter

You may remember that on August 4, 2015 a helicopter with a water bucket crashed into a lake while helping to suppress a fire in Montana. It happened at about 10:30 p.m. when one of the helicopters owned by Two Bear Air, flown by Jordan White the executive director and flight officer of the company, was dipping water out of Beaver Lake north of Whitefish. Mr. White was able to extricate himself from the helicopter and swim to shore just before the aircraft sank. He had minor injuries and it was discovered that there was substantial damage to the helicopter after it was recovered from the lake bottom by divers.

The National Transportation Safety Board has issued a report about the accident, saying, basically, it was pilot error. The pilot reported that he was hovering over a lake at night while engaged in water bucket operations. He was using the MD Helicopters 369E landing light and newly installed movable searchlight positioned to shine underneath and toward the left side of the helicopter for illumination. He reported that he was able to see the shoreline, horizon, and the texture on the water during these operations.

During the third load, he reported that he was transitioning his sight “forward and inside to the instrument panel,” and that while he was scanning the instrument panel, he “noticed the rotor disk dipping toward the water.” He stated that he saw the main rotor blades strike the water and then the helicopter impacted the water. The cockpit filled with water as the helicopter rolled upside-down and began to sink. The pilot reported that while he was egressing from the cockpit underwater, he felt his “helmet tug backwards and I realized the communications cord was still attached to the helicopter.” The pilot removed his helmet, surfaced, and swam to the shore without further incident.

The recovery of the helicopter from the lake revealed substantial damage to the fuselage, the main rotor blade system, and the tail boom. The pilot reported there were no preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation.

The pilot reported that he had prior formal external load training, but no formal over-water external load training. He reported that he had never had formal underwater egress training and was not wearing a flotation device at the time of the accident.

Live reporting from a prescribed fire

prescribed fire video live
Micah and Laura as seen in the video shot at a prescribed fire.
Yesterday firefighters at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore in northwest Indiana broadcast a live report from a prescribed fire. This is at least the second time we’re aware of that they have used this new feature on Facebook. When they did it on March 19, 2016 Facebook was only allowing a relatively small number of users to stream live. Now they are rolling out this ability to everyone.

Periscope and a few other apps have been doing this for a year or more, but Facebook having this ability to send live video to hundreds of millions of users is a game-changer. I expect we will see more live reports from wildfires and prescribed fires around the world this summer.

Road grader is overrun by a wildfire in Oklahoma; reporters shoot video and save the operator

In case you missed it in Tuesday’s article about the wildfires in northwest Oklahoma, a road grader operator had a VERY, VERY close call trying to put in a control line around a fire. Here’s what we wrote yesterday:

grader overrun by fire
Screen shot from News9 video of road grader being overrun by wildfire in Oklahoma.

I just watched a replay on NEWS9.com of a road grader that had been putting in fire line get stuck as it tried to go up a slope to get on a road. The operator spent several seconds trying to get the machinery unstuck as the fire bore down. The flames were actually impinging on the grader as the operator jumped out the door and ran over to a reporter’s vehicle and got inside. By then the flames were pouring over the hood of that vehicle as the reporter quickly backed away, as if he was driving away from a tornado, he said. Apparently the grader operator was not injured.

Below is the video of the grader burnover.

News9.com – Oklahoma City, OK – News, Weather, Video and Sports |

Huffington Post reports on sexual harassment in National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service

Colorado River Grand Canyon

Above: South Kaibab Trail in the Grand Canyon – Panorama Point. NPS photo by Michael Quinn

The Huffington Post in a lengthy article by Kathryn Joyce describes what appears to be a stunning culture of serious sexual harassment being virtually tolerated in some locations within the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service. Ms. Joyce describes numerous disturbing examples of female employees, including a wildland firefighter, being aggressively degraded and humiliated with little if any repercussions for the assailant. In some cases the victims were fired.

There is no accusation that this atmosphere exists throughout the USFS and NPS, but it is disturbing that so many examples are given where high level management made very poor choices, allowing the unacceptable actions to continue and later affect more employees.

An illustration of the abuse is how Cheyenne Szydlo was treated on a Colorado River trip in Grand Canyon National Park. As a wildlife biologist she had to be there to hunt for the Southwestern willow flycatcher, a tiny endangered songbird that historically had nested on the river but hadn’t been seen in three years. Her supervisor believed the bird was locally extinct. It was just Ms. Szydlo and the boatman, a male National Park Service employee, at the bottom of the canyon for nine days, with no way to escape and no cell phone coverage. Even if she hiked a mile up to the canyon rim she would be in the middle of the desert with little if any food or water. The sexual harassment she endured from the boatman, explained in detail in the article, was harrowing and got worse every day.

Ms. Szydlo was not the only victim while working along the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon.

…“What happened to [Lynn] was the most horrifying thing I’d ever seen,” said Chelly Kearney, who had made her own efforts to draw attention to the treatment of women on the river. About a year after she resigned in 2012, she wrote a 29-page letter to Grand Canyon Chief Ranger Bill Wright documenting multiple instances of harassment, assault and retaliation and describing a culture that protected male harassers while allowing victims to be targeted for retaliation. The Park Service requested a formal EEO investigation, but the final report was never distributed beyond the uppermost level of park management and no disciplinary actions were taken.

Following Lynn and Anne’s dismissals, Kearney tried again. She forwarded her letter to [Grand Canyon National Park Superintendent David] Uberuaga, writing that she had witnessed a “disturbing and pervasive level of hatred” toward Anne and her boss and that Anne should be protected by federal whistle-blower laws. She received a brief response from Uberuaga thanking her for her concern…

The stories in the article are horrifying — that federal employees on, and off the job, could be so mistreated by their fellow workers. But even worse, in too many cases nothing significant was done to curtail the harassment. Some victims were fired for reporting it, or had to resign in order get away from an untenable or unsafe situation.

Finally the NPS initiated a high level investigation that lasted for a year and a half. This occurred only after the complaints got the attention of Sally Jewell, the Secretary of the Interior, one level below the President. Twelve women wrote to her requesting a formal inquiry into the “pervasive culture of discrimination, retaliation, and a sexually hostile work environment” in the River District of Grand Canyon National Park.

This January the Department of the Interior’s Office of Inspector General announced that it had “found evidence of a long-term pattern of sexual harassment and hostile work environment” in the Grand Canyon’s River District.

This is not, of course, an indictment of the entire NPS or USFS organizations. At most locations, we hope, the culture does not permit harassment. Or if it is reported, it is dealt with immediately and fairly. But obviously, as reported by Ms. Joyce, there is still work left to do.

Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Jim.

Report concludes that USFS should revise fire protection agreement with CAL FIRE

An audit conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of Inspector General concluded that the U.S. Forest Service has assumed a disproportionate share of the fire suppression burden specified in interagency agreements with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE).

The USFS enters into fire protection agreements with other land management agencies when, after evaluating geography and the location of fire suppression resources, it appears to make economic sense that Agency A protect portions of Agency B’s lands in some areas, and vice versa. But there are inherent differences, on a broad scale, between the National Forests in California and lands CAL FIRE is charged to protect. The private property has more people and structures on or close it, therefore more wildland-urban interface (WUI). When fires approach or burn private property and homes in a WUI, it historically has generated a much more aggressive and expensive response than fires in a typical USFS forested area. While the acres exchanged in these agreements may on the surface appear to be more or less equal, the responsibility to protect them from wildfires can be very different — and more costly.

State lands in California near National Forests generally have more grass, brush, and WUI areas than Forest land in the same general area. The table below, from the IG report, shows the difference in costs for putting out fires in the three different types of fuel.

Fire Suppression costs per acre

The Inspector General found that in California, the USFS has assumed responsibility for protecting almost 2.8 million acres of private land, exchanging the protection of land that is inexpensive for land that is more difficult, and therefore more expensive, for example WUI areas near forests. State officials, according to the report, took responsibility for
land that was comparatively inexpensive to protect, such as grassland.

The Inspector General recommends that the USFS reassess its fire protection responsibilities with CAL FIRE.

In addition to the inequalities regarding areas that are protected, the Inspector General uncovered other issues:

OIG also found that local cooperators used indirect cost rates for firefighting activities that may have been excessive and unreasonable. FS did not safeguard its assets by establishing policies and procedures to review indirect cost rates charged by local cooperators. As a result, we questioned over $4.5 million in administrative costs paid to nine cooperators in California. In addition, FS overpaid $6.5 million to Colorado State University for unallowable administrative costs during a 4-year period. Although FS identified this issue and ceased future overpayments, it has not recovered the overpayments.

On a side note, the illustrations on the cover of the USDA Inspector General’s report, emphasizing radishes, chickens, and carrots, shows how land management and the suppression of wildfires seems to be an afterthought within the Department even when issuing a report about firefighting. IG report coverThis is in spite of the fact that the USFS spends about $1.2 billion annually on fire suppression, which consumed 52 percent of its budget in fiscal year 2015. The five major federal land management agencies in the USDA and Department of the Interior employ over 13,000 wildland firefighters, a group of employees that should be difficult to overlook, but often is.

This prompts us once again to think about how things might be different if all of the federal land management agencies, or perhaps only their fire departments, were in a stand-alone agency, emphasizing at number one, fire protection, rather than radishes.

Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Tom.