Wildfire Today

You can put this in the rumor category for now, but Wildfire Today has been informed that the Department of Interior is considering a realignment of the office that manages their aviation program, including wildfire aviation. The Aviation Management Directorate (AMD) which now reports to the National Business Center (NBC) may be renamed and moved to the DOI’s Office of Wildland Fire Coordination. If the changes being considered actually take place, and it could happen as early as April, the new name will be “Office of Aviation Services”, or OAS. If “OAS” sounds familiar it is because until about 2004 the organization was called “Office of Aircraft Services”, or OAS.

We talked to Stew Walker, the Deputy Associate Director of the AMD who told us that the changes we had heard about were “pre-decisional”. Beyond that he would not comment and referred us to Warren Christopher, the NBC’s Chief of Staff. Calls to Mr. Christopher were not returned.

The AMD’s function is “…to raise the safety standards, increase the efficiency, and promote the economical operation of aircraft activities in the Department of the Interior”.  We don’t know if that will change if they move from the NBC over to the Office of Wildland Fire Coordination, which is responsible for the coordination, integration, and oversight of wildland fire management programs within the Department of the Interior (Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Park Service).

Previously shoe-horning the aviation program into the NBC which handles information technology, acquisition, administrative operations, financial management, personnel, and payroll, seemed like an unusual fit. Perhaps the thought is that it is more logical for aviation to work for the wildland fire group than an administrative services organization.

As we understand it, here are the past, present, and pre-decisional rumored organizational structures:

Until about 2004:

• Office of the Secretary of Interior
• —Office of Aircraft Services (there may have been a layer between the OAS and the Secretary’s office)

From about 2004 until the present:

• Office of the Secretary of Interior
• —-Asst. Secretary, Policy, Management and Budget
• ——-National Business Center
• ———-Aviation Management Directorate

Possible new structure, perhaps beginning around April, 2012:

• Office of Secretary of Interior
• —-Asst. Secretary, Policy, Management and Budget
• ——-Office of Wildland Fire Coordination
• ———–Office of Aviation Services

This is not confirmed and should be treated as a rumor for now.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection released this video on January 6 alerting the state that this is one of the driest winters on record.

Thanks go out to Eric

The Senate staffer who ran an office pool to guess the number of acres burned each year and how many firefighting planes would crash apologized this week. Frank Gladics had been running the annual contest since 2003. It was open to staffers on the House Senate Energy and Appropriations Committees that oversee federal firefighting operations.

Criticism of the pool came from Lynnette Hamm, mother of Caleb Hamm who died on the CR 337 fire in Texas last summer, and the Federal Wildland Fire Service Association.

Robert Dillon, spokesman for the Republicans on the committee, said Gladics started the pool because of his frustration with U.S. Forest Service wildfire management, including the agency’s decision to ground aging aircraft. Dillon said “We certainly understand this is in poor taste and it’s been stopped. There was no disrespect meant and we are horrified anybody would think we disrespect the sacrifices the firefighters have made.”

Frankly, I don’t have a huge problem with a guess-the-acres contest. What bothers me is competing to correctly guess, according to the Grist site that first broke the story,

…how many fire-fighting planes (“fixed-wing, heavy-slurry aircraft”) will crash…

When air tankers crash, the crews almost always die. This contest where the prize is a “When Pigs Fly” hat or a “Holly Jolly Christmas” hat, is extremely disrespectful to the living and dead crews of firefighting aircraft, and all firefighters.

We were saddened and disappointed today to find out that the Department of Homeland Security somehow overlooked Wildfire Today when they created a list of web sites that they are monitoring “in order to provide situational awareness and establish a common operating picture”.

In November the DHS released a “privacy compliance review” document that lists dozens of web sites that they are monitoring. The list includes Facebook, Twitter, Hulu, and the Drudge Report, as well as some other sites that may actually have some information about security in the homeland.

I looked for wildfire related sites on the list and found two: the LA Times’ L.A. Now/Wildfires blog and InciWeb. A third one has the word “fire” in it, but it turned out to be a far right wing site about immigration.

Apparently the DHS does not rank Lame Ass Ideas and Idiots as a very high priority for their monitoring program.

The Chicago Tribune has more information about the DHS list.