Tag: legislation

On Thursday, January 21, Representative Bob Filner (D, California) introduced into the House of Representatives a bill, the “National Infrastructure Improvement and Cost Containment Act”, that would affect the pay, retirement age, and fireline liability of federal wildland firefighters. Here are some key points of the bill, which was given the number H.R. 4488 (the full text is HERE):

• Retirement age: The bill would change the mandatory retirement age for a wildland firefighter from 57 to 65.
• Outsourcing: It adds protection from outsourcing for the five major federal land management agencies, the USFS, BLM, NPS, USF&WS, and the BIA.
• Wildland Firefighter series: It requires that the Office of Personnel Management develop a “separate and distinct wildland firefighter occupational series that will more accurately reflect the variety of duties performed by wildland firefighters.” Anyone who is currently in the 401 series would have the option of transferring to the new Wildland Firefighter series.
• Portal-to-Portal: $25 million would be authorized to begin a pilot program in which firefighters would be paid for “all time the firefighter is away from their official duty station assigned to an emergency incident, in support of an emergency incident, or pre-positioned for emergency response”. Standard overtime rules would apply and employees would be exempt from premium pay limitations. The pilot program would begin “with the 2010 wildfire season”. The Department of Agriculture and Interior would participate in the pilot program which would not exceed three calendar years.
• Non-Federal resources: The bill requires that during the pilot program there would be reductions in the amount of fire suppression funds expended on non-Federal fire suppression resources.
• Hazardous Duty Pay would be treated as part of base pay for retirement purposes. And the following is a little vague, but it appears that firefighters would receive hazard duty pay for all the time they are “on the fire line of any wildfire or prescribed fuel treatment burn or fire“, regardless of the control status.
• Benefits for Seasonal Wildland Firefighters: there are some changes related to the availability of life insurance for seasonal wildland firefighters.
• Buy Back of Previous Firefighting Time: there are changes related to the buy back of work time and how it relates to retirement.
• “Sec. 8. Firefighter Liability”: The bill requires that for every fatality to a firefighter or other employee of  the U.S. Forest Service and now the four Dept. of Interior land management agencies due to an entrapment or “burrower”, the department’s Inspector General (IG) shall conduct an investigation. This requirement has been in effect for the U.S. Forest Service, only, since the 2002 Cantwell-Hastings bill, and has resulted in witch hunts, attorney fees, and jail time for firefighters who make mistakes on the fireline. The bill would repeal the provisions of the 2002 bill regarding the IG investigations for USFS fatalities but replaces it with similar requirements that would apply to the USFS and the Dept. of Interior wildland firefighters. The bill does, however, require that IG investigators “have the necessary training, skills, and experience to competently conduct the investigation”, but does not specify what training, experience, and skills are required. It goes on to say  “The investigations and accompanying reports shall be used by all land management agency fire programs to build upon the concept of lessons learned from the fire event. It is not the intent of Congress that the investigations and reports would be used to find fault or place blame for a fatality, but rather to recognize that wildland firefighting is an inherently dangerous occupation and to reduce the number of fatalities from due to wildfire entrapment or burrower.”

I will have to assume that a term that repeatedly shows up in the bill, “burrower”, is a typo, and they really mean “burnover”. An unexpected consequence of spell-check run by an intern?

It is interesting, ironic, and insulting that the portion of the bill that is named “Sec. 8. Firefighter Liability” actually adds to and worsens the liability problems for wildland firefighters, spreading the IG witch hunts further, now into the Department of Interior.

That section is worrisome. I don’t see the need to double down on the ill-conceived requirement of IG investigations on fatalities. Originally thought in 2002 that it would enhance safety for the U.S. Forest Service, it has had the unintended consequence of making it difficult or impossible to glean any lessons learned, since firefighters involved in a burrower burnover or major accident are now lawyering-up and refusing to speak to investigators.

The simple statement in the bill that the intent is not to “find fault or place blame” will not prevent the IG’s law enforcement officers, fresh out of Basic Wildland Firefighter training, who will be conducting investigations, from doing just that–finding fault and placing blame. That is what they do every day in their law enforcement job.

And more firefighters may go to jail for mistakes made in the heat of a wildfire battle.

The intent of the 2002 bill, now law, was to enhance safety, but it did the opposite. Intent means nothing. Intent is crap.

The bill has been referred to four committees:

House Oversight and Government Reform
House Natural Resources
House Agriculture
House Armed Services

The bill has only been introduced in the House and referred to committees. Other than than that no action has been taken. But this is a huge and very positive step, and much credit must be given to Casey Judd of the Federal Wildland Fire Service Association who has been pursuing this legislation for years.

The best case scenario is that the bill will make it out of the four committees unscathed (except for the removal of the Liability section), will be approved by the full House, similar action will occur in the Senate, and then will be signed by the President.  The worst case is that the bill will die in the committees and never receive consideration in the full House. Or there could be something in between, with the text of the bill being changed or watered down.

If you have an interest in this bill you should visit the web sites of the four committees listed above and see if a Representative from your state sits on one or more of them. If so, a letter or a phone call to their offices could make a difference.

Wildfire Today supports this bill, but only if the “Sec. 8. Firefighter Liability” portion is removed, or completely rewritten to eliminate the Inspector General offices from the process and specify in their place a real professional-quality Serious Accident Review Team composed of subject matter experts, not cops.

The cops in the IGs’ offices should not be asked to step far out of their training and experience to make judgments about wildland fire behavior, strategy, tactics, and human factors. Nor should firefighters investigate the fatality of a law enforcement officer. It takes decades to become an expert in the field of wildland fire. It takes longer to become a Type 1 Incident Commander on a fire than it does to become a brain surgeon.

You can follow the progress of the bill HERE.

UPDATE at 9:40 MT, January 26, 2010:

One of the folks who commented, Michael, asked if the bill applied to AD firefighters. I pasted more information about that in a response to his comment below in the “Responses”, but to me this question is still up in the air. There is a possibility that nothing in this bill would apply to AD firefighters OR “militia” employees.

If that is the case, it is a shame for a number of reasons. If it did apply to them, it would have had a very positive effect on the number of people that would have made themselves available for fire and incident management team assignments. Wildfire Today covered HERE some of the problems caused by a lack of participation on incident management teams.

Live Discussion, Thursday night

We will have a live discussion about this legislation Thursday night, featuring Casey Judd, Business Manager of the FWFSA. More information is HERE.

Most of the National Guard Blackhawk helicopters that I have seen dropping water on fires have used a collapsible bucket hanging from a very short line, about 25-30′ long. The prop wash from the rotor blades blows the fire all over the place. At times a pilot will drop at high speed to  minimize the prop wash.

That’s why I was pleased to see an earmark in the 2010 Department of Defense Appropriations Bill that allocates $4,160,00 for fixed belly tanks for National Guard Blackhawk helicopters.

Funding would be used for engineering, evaluation and procurement of the Recoil UH-60 Blackhawk Helicopter R60 Wildland Fire-Fighting Tank System (900 gallon) for the Army National Guard (ARNG). This is in an aim to make R60 tanks become organic equipment of the ARNG be distributed nationwide to State Army National Guard to support and respond to wildland fires.

 

The Senate has passed a bill that provides funds for wildland fire management on federal lands in Fiscal Year 2010. Usually the Department of Interior initially receives the fire funds which are then dispersed to the other Interior agencies and the U. S. Forest Service, even though the USFS is in the Department of Agriculture. 

The bill includes an amendment supported by Senators Bingaman and Feinstein that includes the provisions of the previously proposed FLAME act, which not only provides funds for fire suppression, but also for funding to keep critical non-fire programs and services functioning even if unexpected expenses of very large fires consume a disproportionate share of the budget. 

The bill includes a 16% increase over last year’s budget.

Next, the bill needs to be conferenced to work out the differences between the Senate and the House versions.

 

 

Thanks Kelly

Chain saw flash drive

Need a gift for that wildland firefighter/chain saw operator that has everything?  Chances are they don’t already have a 2 GB flash drive in the shape of a chain saw.  These were originally included with special limited edition copies of the game Resident Evil 5 for the Xbox 360 and PS3, but many have shown up on eBay selling for $23-35.  It’s a little pricey for a 2 GB flash drive, but it’s a CHAIN SAW FLASH DRIVE, for pete’s sake.

New York City fire

A 30 to 40-acre fire may not be big news in much of the United States, but when it is in New York City on Staten Island it turns into a 6-alarm emergency.  About 250 firefighters brought it under control after four hours.

Much of the fire was in a cat tail marsh, which can produce some spectacular flames and heavy black smoke.  One firefighter suffered a minor back injury and one unoccupied house was destroyed while two others were damaged.

FEMA teams to survey fire-damaged Oklahoma

The Federal Emergency Management Agency will begin on Tuesday gathering information about the damage caused by the fires last week.  State officials have said 100-150 homes were destroyed in the state by the wildfires.  The FEMA survey will determine the amount of federal disaster aid that will be available.  Midwest City near Oklahoma City and portions of the southern part of the state were especially hard hit.

State Farm Insurance estimates there will be more than $10 million worth of home and automobile damage from the fires in Oklahoma.

Helicopter Association concerned about FLAME Act.

The U.S. House of Representatives on March 26 passed by a 412 to 3 vote the FLAME Act which establishes a new federal fund to cover the growing costs associated with fighting wildland fires.  The fire funding issue is one that MUST be addressed so that federal agencies do not have their budgets for a wide range of priorities devastated when wildland fires occur.  This portion of the bill is widely recognized as very important and long overdue.

However, one of the 12 amendments attached to the bill requires that the Secretaries of Interior and Agriculture submit a “cohesive wildland fire management strategy” report, with one of the components being:

“A plan, developed in coordination with the National Guard Bureau, to maximize the use of National Guard resources to fight wildfires.”

The Helicopter Association International is concerned that National Guard helicopters would be used instead of privately owned helicopters to fight wildfires, putting additional economic stress on private companies, many of which are struggling in this economy.

From the Association’s web site:

This is a critical firefighting issue that affects all helicopter operators, especially those under contract to the Department of the Interior and the U.S. Forest Service. The state of the U.S. economy is grim, and significant emphasis has been placed on helping large corporations, auto manufacturers, and financial institutions.

Should the National Guard language be added to the Senate bill and the final legislation signed by President Obama direct the maximum use of National Guard resources to fight wildfires, firefighting operators will be significantly affected by this action which could limit the use of commercial firefighting resources.

Many HAI operators conducting firefighting operations across the United States are small businesses and are the backbone of the aviation industry. They are an indispensable component of this nation’s economy. It is imperative that Congress understand their value when considering legislation.

They may have a valid concern.  Existing federal rules for air tankers, for example, require that privately-owned air tankers be totally committed before government-owned air tankers, such as the National Guard operated MAFF C-130 air tankers, be activated.   I expect that the Association would want at least the same measure of protection governing the use of National Guard helicopters.

Nine FF’s injured in “tanker” rollover

Firegeezer, a site always worth visiting, has the story (with lots of photos) of a tanker-pumper that rolled over in Australia Austria injuring nine firefighters.  Wow.  That’s a lot of firefighters on a tanker-pumper.

Thanks, Chuck.

From FireChief.com:

U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) introduced legislation that would promote compliance with consensus safety standards to reduce the number of firefighter fatalities. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) is the bill’s cosponsor.

While the National Fire Protection Association and other groups have developed industry safety standards, they are voluntary and often ignored by fire departments, Brown said. Brown’s bill would encourage the adoption of national consensus firefighter-safety standards and promote fire department compliance with such standards.

“We shouldn’t have to think twice about bolstering the safety of our firefighters,” Brown said. “Our first responders put their lives at risk daily. We should take this opportunity to prevent fire fighter injury and death.”

Brown’s legislation, the Firefighter Fatality Reduction Act, would require the Department of Homeland Security to determine the rate of fire department compliance with standards for safe operations, staffing, training and fitness among career, volunteer and combination fire departments. It would create a task force to explore the adoption of safety standards by fire departments and provide recommendations to Congress, states, and localities on how to increase fire department compliance with safety standards. This bill would not mandate federal oversight of local fire departments, but instead would explore how the federal government could best promote firefighter-safety standards and assist fire departments with compliance.

Brown also is the sponsor of the Fire Fighter Higher Education Incentive Act of 2007 which would help federal, state, city, and county fire districts recruit highly educated fire fighters by forgiving student loans taken out by firefighters under the federal Perkins Loan program. All employees in fire protection would be eligible for the benefit, including fire fighters, paramedics, EMTs, rescue workers, ambulance personnel, and hazardous materials workers. Under current law, Perkins debt for teachers, nurses, military and law enforcement officers can be forgiven.

“Loan forgiveness is both well deserved and an effective recruitment tool,” Brown said.