It is still not clear why CAL FIRE Chief was removed from position

CAL FIRE Chief John Hawkins
Chief John Hawkins speaking at the Wildland Fire Safety Summit in Pasadena, April, 2006. IAWF photo by Bill Gabbert.

Friday of last week news broke that John Hawkins, the longtime chief of the CAL FIRE Riverside Unit and Riverside County Fire Department, was suddenly removed from his position. There was no immediate permanent successor identified and he is being temporarily replaced by Deputy Chief Dan Talbot. Chief Hawkins’ firefighting career has spanned 54 years and he had been in his County Chief position for 12 years.

The local newspaper, the Press-Enterprise, published a story late Tuesday afternoon providing a little more information, reporting that it was a CAL FIRE decision, and not a move by the Riverside County Board of Supervisors:

“CAL FIRE made the decision that it was time for new leadership,” said [County Supervisor Kevin] Jeffries, a former volunteer fire captain. “There was no scandalous events that occurred, nothing exciting like that. It was just a leadership change that CAL FIRE felt was important and we were kind of kept in the loop a little bit. But it was a decision of CAL FIRE.”

Chief Hawkins was not only the Chief of the CAL FIRE units in Riverside County protecting state responsibility areas in the Southern California County, but he also supervised the CAL FIRE resources that provide services under contract to Riverside County, which is the 4th-most populous county in California and the 11th-most populous in the United States.

CAL FIRE Riverside County Chief removed from position

Above: Chief John Hawkins speaking at the 9th IAWF Wildland Fire Safety Summit in Pasadena, April, 2006. IAWF photo by Bill Gabbert.

(Originally published at 12:05 p.m. MST January 20, 2018)

John R. Hawkins, the longtime chief of the CAL FIRE Riverside Unit and Riverside County Fire Department was suddenly removed from his position Friday. Chief Hawkins’ firefighting career has spanned 54 years and he had been in his County Chief position for 12 years.

Replacing him temporarily is Deputy Chief Dan Talbot.

Below is an excerpt from an article in the Idyllwild Town Crier:

“All I have right now is Chief Hawkins is no longer the fire chief and the department has put an intern chief in as of now. Chief Hawkins is still an employee and that’s all I have as is now,” said CAL FIRE Chief Mike Mohler of the Southern Region Communications for CAL FIRE’s South Ops.

Chief Hawkins was the CAL FIRE Incident Commander for the 2003 Cedar Fire that burned 273,000 acres in San Diego County. He is beloved by many and is a very dynamic speaker sought after for conferences and training.

CAL FIRE Chief John Hawkins
Chief John Hawkins speaking at the Wildland Fire Safety Summit in Pasadena, April, 2006. IAWF photo by Bill Gabbert.

TBT: Fire effects in Yosemite NP, 1897

For Throwback Thursday we’re throwing WAY back, to 1897. This photo shows Yosemite National Park Superintendent Capt. Alex Rogers standing next to a fire-scarred tree near Tioga Road in September, 1897.

Photo courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Ricky Whipple arrested for setting 11 fires in San Bernardino County

The suspect evaded officers by running through a series of storm drains

Ricky Whipple
Ricky R. Whipple

An arsonist accused of starting 11 wildfires yesterday in San Bernardino County in Southern California has been arrested. Ricky Russel Whipple of Fontana is suspected of starting the fires just before 8 a.m. January 15, 2018 at Glen Helen Regional Park near the Interstate 15/215 junction (map).

After igniting each fire, Mr. Whipple ran through a series a storm drain tunnels underneath the freeways to elude capture from the San Bernardino County Sheriff deputies. Sheriff’s aviation located Mr. Whipple as he walked through dense brush near Cajon Blvd. and Kenwood Avenue close to the last fire.

Deputies contacted Mr. Whipple, who was detained at the scene without incident. They found several items of evidence which connected Mr. Whipple to the crime of arson. The areas set on fire burned dry vegetation and caused a multi-jurisdictional response of fire crews from the San Bernardino County Fire Department, CAL FIRE, and the United States Forest Service. All of the fires were contained and extinguished. However, fire crews spent several hours mopping up.

Mr. Whipple was booked for aggravated arson and is being held on $250,000.00 bail. He is scheduled for court on January 17th.

Interview with Myron Lee

Myron Lee was a very well-respected Type 1 Incident Commander and Fire Management Officer of the Cleveland National Forest in Southern California. We were saddened to learn he has passed away.

Myron Lee Interview
Above: The header for the .pdf version of the 2007 interview with Myron Lee.

When Myron Lee retired in 1982 the U. S. Forest Service lost the services of a very skilled and experienced firefighter. He was the Fire Management Officer for the Cleveland National Forest in Southern California from 1968 until 1982, including the periods when the fire organizations were transitioning into FIRESCOPE and the Incident Command System.

While checking out the “El Cariso Interagency Hotshot” Facebook page last week I was saddened to see in a post by Bill Molumby that Myron had passed away. It didn’t say when or how, but I’m guessing he must have been about 90 years old. His 36-year career started in 1946 as a firefighter on the engine crew on Palomar Mountain on the Cleveland.

He was Incident Commander, or at that time “Fire Boss”, on some of the largest blazes in California, including the 175,425-acre Laguna Fire on the Cleveland NF in 1970 and the 177,866-acre Marble Cone Fire on the Los Padres NF in 1977.

I worked on the Cleveland for 13 years while Myron was FMO on the Forest and did not know him well but as a Hotshot Captain and Engine Captain I encountered him a number of times. He was friendly, down to earth, intelligent, and had an air of self confidence and a command presence when it was appropriate.

I am reminded of a conversation he and I had. In describing someone, he said, “If a person tells the same lie often enough, even HE begins to believe it”.

Some of the areas of emphasis that were important to him included building relationships with other agencies, assisting fire departments just across the border in northern Mexico, and making sure that firefighters on the Cleveland understood what their role and responsibilities were and importantly, what they were not. He made it clear that medical aids and structure fires were to be handled by other agencies.

In the Facebook post, Jim Huston and Anders Borge Andersen identified a 2007 interview with Myron conducted by Larry Schmidt, apparently as part of a USFS Region 5 (California) History Project. We have the entire interview below. It’s very long, 30 pages, but if you’re a USFS history buff, or worked in Southern California in the 1970s or 1980s, you will enjoy it.

There was one thing that surprised me. In the early 1970s Camp Pendleton intended to test the ability of a laser to shoot down missiles. The Marines asked Myron if resources from the Cleveland could be used to help detect and suppress the expected fires. The interview does not say if the test occurred. I did not know the military has been trying to use lasers since the early 1970s to shoot down aircraft. I think only in recent years have they found much success. The story is on page 16.

The transcript of the interview follows. Keep in mind that it was created from a recording by a person that may not have been familiar with the names and jargon.


LARRY SCHMIDT: This is Larry Schmidt. Today is January 19th. I’m in Twin Falls, Idaho, and I’m interviewing Myron Lee in regard to his experience with the FIRESCOPE program and also his Forest Service history. Myron, can you tell me a little bit about your Forest Service career?

MYRON LEE: Yes, I can. I was a young hoodlum, referred to in the newspaper in San Diego as “a long-haired guttersnipe.” I wasn’t just a young hoodlum later in life, I was a young hoodlum in the third and fourth grades. I believe the teacher wrote on both my report cards from the third grade and the fourth grade that I was “inclined to mischief.” Now, I thought that’s a terrible to write home to tell my parents, but I suspect they may have known it anyway. But I didn’t like school, and I wouldn’t stay home. I was running away from home all the time. And so my stepmother finally made an appointment, and her and I went downtown San Diego to the county courthouse and met with a probation officer first and then a judge, Judge [Turntine?], and Judge Turntine told me I was going to go home and go to school. I told Judge Turntine I was not

Myron Lee, 01/19/07, page 2

going to go home. If I went home, I’d just leave again. I said I wouldn’t mind going to school, but I’m not going home.

Well, we had a fairly serious discussion over it, and he finally found out that I was not going to go home, so he said, “How would you like to go to Mt. Woodson?” I said, “What’s Mt. Woodson?” And he said, “It’s a forestry camp.” And I said, “What do they do?” He said, “Oh, they plant trees and build trails and fight fire, things like that.” I said, “Fine,” so off I went to Mt. Woodson.

After I arrived at Mt. Woodson, I learned Mt. Woodson was the only juvenile detention facility in San Diego Country at that time, and I learned that all of the kids there except me were sentenced there, and most were sentenced for six months. I stayed there for eleven and a half months because it was actually the best life I’d ever had. I loved it. The gentleman I worked for most of the time was an assistant ranger for the California Division of Forestry. That’s what it was known as in those days. “Slim” Carlson, and Slim explained to me one day that he was not going to raise me the rest of my life and that he was going to get me a job and I was going to take it and I was going to do what I was told. So I said, “Okay.”

So I went to work for the California Division of Forestry. I worked as a firefighter at Dulzura, [Lyons?] Valley and La Mesa, and enjoyed the work. I didn’t enjoy the time we were not out working, because I thought there were a lot of things to do out there, but we were dealing with more urban type development areas, and we spent an awful lot of time polishing the fire truck, and I didn’t enjoy that. Continue reading “Interview with Myron Lee”

Images from mud flows and flooding in Southern California

We spent a few minutes on Twitter Tuesday evening looking for information about the impacts of the very heavy rain northwest of Los Angeles over the last 24 hours. The freshly barren burned hills above some of these areas contributed to the extraordinary amount of water and debris transported into the communities.