Pressure from politicians was resisted during investigation of the Thirtymile Fire

Thirty Mile Fire Memorial
Thirty Mile Fire Memorial. USFS photo.

In the world of wildland fire the Thirtymile Fire established a turning point and a cascade of unintended consequences.

On July 10, 2001 the fire in the Chewuch River Valley in Washington took the lives of four U.S. Forest Service firefighters and triggered a series of events and knee-jerk reactions that have been affecting firefighters ever since.

Killed that day were:

Tom L. Craven, 30, Ellensburg, WA
Karen L. Fitzpatrick, 18, Yakima, WA
Devin A. Weaver, 21, Yakima, WA
Jessica L. Johnson, 19, Yakima, WA

The tragic event set a precedent for charging a wildland firefighter with felonies for making mistakes during an emergency fire response. After the fire politicians passed a federal law making it mandatory for the Department of Agriculture’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), which had no experience in wildland fire, to investigate fatalities of U.S. Forest Service personnel that occurred on a fire to decide if any federal laws were broken by firefighters during the suppression of the fire. In order to avoid being swept up in lawsuits or criminal charges, some firefighters started refusing to participate in fire investigations, purchased professional liability insurance, and at times felt the need to lawyer up. Overnight it became more difficult to unearth lessons to be learned after close calls, injuries, or fatalities on wildland fires.

But it might have been even worse.

The website The Smokey Wire: National Forest News and Views, has an article by Sharon T. Friedman and Jim Furnish that describes how the lead investigator for the Forest Service had to fight off political pressure when the team was preparing to unveil the findings of the investigation.

The piece covers in general how government agencies have to deal with interference from  political appointees, then has  examples from Former Deputy Chief for National Forest Systems, Jim Furnish.

This subject is especially relevant now, days after leadership in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration failed to resist pressure from politicians, and threw National Weather Service employees under the bus for providing a forecast for a hurricane.

The article from The Smokey Wire is below, used here with permission.

Political Appointees, The Good and the Bad: Guest Post by Jim Furnish. 1. Mt Wilson and Thirtymile Fire

August 29, 2019 by Sharon T. Friedman, Ph.D.

I think it’s important for folks who haven’t worked in the agencies, or with politicals, to hear what the interface between politicals and career civil servants can be like, in terms of the day-to-day management of the agency. For the Forest Service, anyway, pressure by politicals can be less like an assembly line of policy from DC to Ranger District, and more like the Administration punching a pillow, where the pressure dissipates through time and space.

To open the discussion, I asked Jim Furnish, former Deputy Chief of the National Forest System, to share the good and the bad of his experiences with politicals. For those of you who are not Forest Service folks, the chain of command goes like this: the Secretary of Agriculture (now Sonny Perdue) is over the Undersecretary over the Forest Service (now Jim Hubbard, formerly State Forester of Colorado). Those are political folks, and under that is the Chief of the Forest Service (not technically political, that’s a historic discussion in and of itself, but new Administrations of a different color tend to get rid of the old ones, in more or less dramatic ways), and the Deputy Chief for the National Forest System is the next layer down. There are other Deputy Chiefs, e.g. State and Private, that are over state and private programs and Fire, and Research and Development, Administration and International Programs, but the main issues that concern us here (other than fire) are all within the purview of the Deputy Chief for NFS. For example, the Director of Ecosystem Management Coordination (EMC) where litigation, NEPA and Planning are housed, works for that person in DC.

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Bill introduced to require local approval or collaboration of prescribed fires

Cold Brook Fire April 13, 2015
Cold Brook Fire April 13, 2015, looking northwest shortly after the prescribed fire crossed Highway 385. Photo by Benjamin Carstens (click to enlarge)

The same U.S. Senator who earlier made some guesses about what caused the Cold Brook prescribed fire in Wind Cave National Park to escape control in South Dakota, burning an additional 5,420 acres, has introduced a bill that would require “collaboration with state government and local fire officials before a prescribed burn could be started on federal land when fire danger is at certain levels in the area of the prescribed burn”.

The text of Senate Bill 1100 introduced by Senator John Thune is not yet available; the passage above was included in a newsletter distributed by his office on April 29.

Our position is that it is very appropriate for the legislative Branch to provide oversight of actions taken by the Executive Branch of government. However, that oversight should NOT be a knee-jerk reaction based on the quick assumptions and guesses of a Senator about what caused a particular outcome. Wait until the facts are in, THEN provide reasoned advice based on science.

An example of a Senator’s ready-fire-aim approach to fix a perceived problem is Senator Maria Cantwell’s and Representative Doc Hastings’ hastily conceived Public Law 107-203 in 2002 following the Thirtymile Fire that killed four firefighters. That bill resulted in the firefighters’ crew boss being charged with 11 felonies, including four counts of manslaughter. The law destroyed the process of obtaining information about the cause and prevention of serious accidents on the fireline. We hope that Senator Thune is not following in Senator Cantwell’s ill-conceived footsteps.

Politicians should take a breath, and resist the overwhelming temptation to criticize the administration of the other party before the facts are known.

Below is a press release from the office of Senator Thune:

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“Thune Introduces Bill to Prevent Reckless Prescribed Burns on Federal Lands

U.S. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) last night introduced a bill that would require collaboration between federal and local officials before initiating a prescribed burn on federal lands when fire danger is high. Thune’s bill follows two prescribed burns in South Dakota in the past two years that have burned out-of-control, one set by the Forest Service (FS) in northwestern South Dakota known as the Pautre Fire and most recently one set by the National Park Service (NPS) on April 13, 2015, known as the Cold Brook Fire at Wind Cave National Park.

“Over the past two years, the federal government has twice exercised a complete disregard for imminent fire danger by starting prescribed burns under unsafe conditions in South Dakota,” said Thune. “The Pautre Fire caused extensive property losses and both fires required multiple firefighting units, equipment, and personnel to fight the out-of-control fires. It is reasonable to require federal agencies to collaborate with state governments and local fire officials before setting prescribed burns under these conditions, and that is exactly what my bill would do.”

Both prescribed burns in South Dakota were started under extremely dry conditions. Thune’s bill looks to address numerous issues that came about as a result of these fires. Under Thune’s bill, the Cold Brook Fire would not have been set due to the restrictions on prescribed burns during dry conditions unless state and local officials had consented. Additionally, if this bill had been enacted at the time of the Pautre Fire, individuals impacted by out-of-control burns would be reimbursed for their damages in a timely manner. Pautre fire victims still have not been reimbursed by the FS, nor has the FS accepted fault.

Thune’s bill, the Prescribed Burn Approval Act of 2015, would require the head of a federal agency to first collaborate and obtain approval from state government and local fire officials if the Grassland Fire Danger Index indicates a high, very high, or extreme fire danger or the FS has declared very high or extreme fire danger. Thune’s bill also stipulates that should a federal agency proceed with a prescribed burn that damages private property, it is liable for any damage to private property caused by the burn, with damages to be paid within 120 days of receipt of a substantiated claim.

Throwback Thursday

Let’s take a look six years back to see what we were writing about March 23-29, 2008.

—Highlights of the 2008 Annual Wildland Fire Refresher Training.

Wildland Firefighter RefresherTraining 2008
–The After Action Review was released for the Santiago Fire, which was in Orange County, California.

–The U.S. Forest Service Fire Prevention Technician convicted of starting the 137,000-acre Hayman fire in Colorado was re-sentenced to 15 years probation and 1,500 hours of community service.

–A spokesman for North Carolina Division of Forest Resources in Raleigh, said rangers from the division have been allowing a fire to burn on an 18-acre uninhabited island because it doesn’t pose a threat to people or properties.

–A B-1 bomber while landing at Ellsworth Air Force Base had an in-flight emergency and may have dropped burning debris near the base that started multiple wildfires.

–There was an update on the trial of the Crew Boss and Type 3 Incident Commander on the Thirtymile Fire near Winthrop, Washington in 2001. Four members of his crew were overrun by fire and died.

—GAO studies moving US Forest Service to Dept. of the Interior.

—Poway, Calif., Firefighters Were Ordered To Not Fight Fires.

Differences between military and Forest Service accident investigations

The accident report on the fatal crash of the military C-130 MAFFS air tanker which was released yesterday illustrated one very important difference between accident investigations conducted by the military and the U.S. Forest Service. A notice on page two of the report points out that the findings of military aviation accident investigations are regulated by law, 10 U.S.C. 2254(d), which states:

Use of Information in Civil Proceedings.—For purposes of any civil or criminal proceeding arising from an aircraft accident, any opinion of the accident investigators as to the cause of, or the factors contributing to, the accident set forth in the accident investigation report may not be considered as evidence in such proceeding, nor may such information be considered an admission of liability by the United States or by any person referred to in those conclusions or statements.

C-130 MAFFS crash, July 1, 2012
C-130 MAFFS air tanker crash, July 1, 2012. US Air Force photo

For fatal wildfire burnovers or entrapments of U.S. Forest Service employees, a law provides for just the opposite, thanks to a bill that was sponsored by Senator Maria Cantwell and U.S. Representative Doc Hastings, which became Public Law 107-203 in 2002:

In the case of each fatality of an officer or employee of the Forest Service that occurs due to wildfire entrapment or burnover, the Inspector General of the Department of Agriculture shall conduct an investigation of the fatality. The investigation shall not rely on, and shall be completely independent of, any investigation of the fatality that is conducted by the Forest Service.

The Cantwell-Hastings bill that was signed into law in 2002 was a knee-jerk reaction to the fatalities on the Thirtymile fire the previous year. The Department of Agriculture’s Inspector General’s office had no experience or training in the suppression or investigation of wildland fires. They are much more likely to be investigating violations at a chicken ranch than evaluating fire behavior and tactical decisions at a wildfire. The goal of the Inspector General investigation would be to determine if any crimes were committed, so that a firefighter could be charged and possibly sent to prison.

After the trainee wildland fire investigator for the OIG finished looking at the Thirtymile fire, on January 30, 2007 the crew boss of the four firefighters that died was charged with 11 felonies, including four counts of manslaughter. The charges were later reduced to two counts of making false statements to which the crew boss pleaded guilty on August 20, 2008. He was sentenced to three years of probation and 90 days of work release.

The criminal charges brought against the firefighter who may or may not have made some mistakes on the fire had a serious, chilling effect on wildland firefighters. Not only does it make them reluctant to speak to anyone about what happened on an accident, some even had second thoughts about their willingness to continue working in a professional they loved because potential criminal charges or convictions could ruin their lives and the livelihood of their families.

In addition, firefighters lawyering-up after an accident makes it difficult to discover the causes of an accident and to learn lessons which could save lives by preventing similar fatalities.

The four-fatality MAFFS accident was a complex chain of events involving many individuals and firefighting resources. But in spite of the complexity, the report was released to the public only four months after the accident, making it possible for lessons to be learned while reducing the chances of a similar accident taking more lives.

This short turnaround is unheard of in the wildland fire agencies in part due to the potential civil and criminal implications down the road.

This is literally a life and death issue — Senator Maria Cantwell’s and Representative Doc Hastings’ hastily conceived Public Law 107-203 must be repealed and replaced by one similar to 10 U.S.C. 2254(d), which serves the military very well. The Cantwell-Hastings law serves no useful purpose. Accidents are investigated, with or without the ridiculous law. It had unintended consequences and needs to be fixed.

Experts convicted of manslaughter for not warning about earthquake

A court in Italy has convicted seven earthquake experts of manslaughter for not warning the public about the April 2009 quake that killed more than 300 people in L’Aquila.

The decision brings to mind the manslaughter charges brought against a firefighter after the fatal 2001 Thirtymile fire in Washington state.

In the case in Italy, the judge sentenced six scientists and a former government official to six years and ordered them to pay court costs and damages of $10.2 million. Most of the seven were seismologists and geologists, members of a National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks that met shortly before the quake struck after weeks of frequent small tremors. But they did not issue a public warning.

The court’s decision shook a community of scientists who evaluate the risks of natural hazards. “This is the death of public service on the part of professors and professionals,” Luciano Maiani, the current president of the risk commission, told the news agency Ansa.

Also shaken was the firefighting community when Ellreese Daniels was charged with 11 felonies, including 4 manslaughter charges, for the deaths of four firefighters during the 2001 Thirtymile fire. After those fatalities, politicians passed a federal law making it mandatory for the Department of Agriculture’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), which had no experience in wildland fire, to investigate fatalities of U.S. Forest Service personnel that occurred on a fire to decide if any federal laws were broken by firefighters during the suppression of the fire.

After the trainee wildland fire investigator for the OIG finished looking at the Thirtymile fire, on January 30, 2007 Mr. Daniels, the crew boss of the four firefighters that died, was charged with the felony and manslaughter charges. They were later reduced to two counts of making false statements to which Mr. Daniels pleaded guilty on August 20, 2008. He was sentenced to three years of probation and 90 days of work release.

In a case that is similar in some respects to the Thirtymile fire, three senior fire officers from the Warwickshire Fire Service in the UK were charged with gross negligence manslaughter following the deaths in 2007 of four firefighters while they were working a large fire at a vegetable warehouse in the village of Atherstone on Stour. They were acquitted in May, 2012 after a six-week trial.

Thirtymile fire, 10 years ago today, and the consequences

Thirtymile Fire
Thirtymile fire, July 10, 2001

Exactly 10 years ago today the Thirtymile fire took the lives of four U.S. Forest Service firefighters and triggered a series of events and knee-jerk reactions that have been affecting firefighters ever since.

Killed that day were:

Tom L. Craven, 30, Ellensburg, WA
Karen L. Fitzpatrick, 18, Yakima, WA
Devin A. Weaver, 21, Yakima, WA
Jessica L. Johnson, 19, Yakima, WA

The tragic event set a precedent for charging a wildland firefighter with felonies for making mistakes during an emergency fire response. Politicians passed a federal law making it mandatory for the Department of Agriculture’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), which had no experience in wildland fire, to investigate fatalities of U.S. Forest Service personnel that occurred on a fire to decide if any federal laws were broken by firefighters during the suppression of the fire.

After the trainee wildland fire investigator for the OIG finished looking at the Thirtymile fire, on January 30, 2007 Ellreese Daniels, the crew boss of the four firefighters that died, was charged with 11 felonies, including four counts of manslaughter. The charges were later reduced to two counts of making false statements to which Mr. Daniels pleaded guilty on August 20, 2008. He was sentenced to three years of probation and 90 days of work release.

In 2007 the International Association of Wildland Fire conducted a survey of over 3,300 firefighters about the repercussions of a firefighter facing criminal charges following an accident on a fire. Of the full-time employees surveyed, 6% said that because of the possibility of criminal charges they would no longer accept any fire assignments, and 23% said they would not serve as an Incident Commander, the person in charge of all fire suppression activities on a fire. And 23% of the primary-duty firefighters said they would remove some positions for which they were qualified from their Incident Qualifications Card, or “red card. HERE is a summary of their other findings.

The Wenatchee World has an interesting article about the Thirtymile fire. Here is an excerpt that picks up with a discussion about the OIG investigation and the felony charges:

…“It’s not something we’re excited about,” Ken Snell, Forest Service fire director for the Pacific Northwest Region, said of the possibility of criminal prosecution. “No firefighter on any given day goes out there with the intention of hurting anyone.”

And as for the independent review by the Inspector General, he said, “I don’t want to say it wasn’t good, but it had an unintended consequence of shutting down or slowing our ability to learn” from fatal fires.

Snell said the agency now examines minor to moderate incidents or close calls to learn what mistakes are being repeated.

Dick Mangan, a retired Forest Service official who analyzes fire fatalities, said he thinks the changes have had a negative impact on firefighting.

“Unfortunately, four people lost their lives. There were obviously mistakes made at a number of different levels,” he said. “But the way it was (before Thirtymile), everybody else gets the benefit of learning from it, because it is free and open and everyone admits it. Now, there’s always the threat that when an investigation or review team comes in, if I tell them something it may be held against me.”

Fire commanders also know that the decisions they make in an instant, without full knowledge of the situation, and a prosecutor has years to pick apart each and every move and decide whether to file criminal charges.

“That has cast a fairly dark shadow over fire operations for a lot of people,” he said, adding, “Many have chosen not to take jobs that would put them in a liability situation anymore.”

John N. Maclean, author of The Thirtymile Fire published in 2007, said despite his shortcomings, Daniels should never have been prosecuted.

“It was certainly clumsy in its execution, and disastrous in its consequences,” he said. “People left the upper reaches of firefighting in droves, and today, they’re still having trouble filling incident command classes,” he said.

He said the changes won’t make fire managers more accountable.

“Forcing fire managers to obsess about process does not put out fires,” he said, “And having them always looking over their shoulder because they might be charged with felonies that would put them in jail for decades for what may have been a stupid mistake, but was an honest mistake, does nothing for the future of firefighting.”

The Yakima Herald has short bios of the four firefighters who died on the fire.

Shortly after Mr. Daniels was sentenced in 2008, we published the reaction of John N. Maclean, who after writing his book, has become an expert on the Thirtymile fire and the unintended consequences of the OIG investigations.

The Yakima Herald was extremely critical of the U. S. Forest Service and Ellreese Daniels for years leading up to his trial date, but the article they have about the 10-year anniversary shows a much more balanced tone.

Memorial for the four firefighters

The U.S. Forest Service report on the Thirtymile Fire is here. It’s a large 9mb file.

 

Three U.K. fire officers charged with manslaughter in LODD’s

In the United Kingdom three fire officers have been charged with manslaughter in the line of duty deaths of four firefighters in a structure fire. Firefighters Ian Reid, John Averis, Ashley Stephens and Darren Yates-Badley died while fighting a fire in a vegetable packing warehouse in 2007.

The 2002 Cantwell-Hastings bill has resulted in witch hunts, criminal charges, attorney fees, and jail time for wildland firefighters who make mistakes on the fireline.

The most infamous example was the 2001 Thirtymile fire, after which Ellreese Daniels was charged with 11 felonies related to the deaths of four firefighters who were on his hand crew. He was facing the possibility of decades in prison, but the Assistant U. S. Attorney, perhaps realizing he did not have a winnable case, allowed Daniels to plead guilty to two misdemeanors of making a false statement in an Administrative hearing. Seven years after the fire, he was sentenced to three months of incarceration in a work-release program and three years of probation.

One of the morals of these stories is, if you make decisions on fires, you need professional liability insurance.

(Note: this is the 35th time Wildfire Today has referenced the Thirtymile fire in articles.)

 

Thanks Dick

Loyola University Prof uses Thirtymile fire as evidence women should not be firefighters

A professor at Loyola University New Orleans has written a ridiculous article published by Psychology Today that uses the tragic Thirtymile fire that killed four wildland firefighters in 2001 as evidence that women should not be firefighters and that the concept of national forests is evil and an example of “socialized land ownership”.

The Thirtymile fire, even before this idiot from Loyola spewed forth this garbage, can provoke a very emotional response from wildland firefigters. Not only did we lose four firefighters (see the names below which include two women), but for the first time a wildland firefighter was charged with felonies for the deaths of people on his crew.

The Cantwell-Hastings law that passed in 2002 was a knee-jerk reaction to these deaths. It requires that every fatality of a U.S. Forest Service employee on a fire be investigated by the Department of Agriculture’s Inspector General’s office, a group of people more comfortable investigating fraud of subsidies at chicken ranches than analyzing wildland fire behavior, tactics, and strategy. Their mission is to determine if anyone should be charged with a crime, not to help identify lessons learned or prevent future fatalities.

Ellreese Daniels, the crew boss of those four firefighters, had been initially charged with 11 felonies, including four counts of manslaughter. The charges were reduced to two counts of making false statements to which Mr. Daniels pleaded guilty on August 20, 2008. He was sentenced to three years of probation and 90 days of work release.

So the idiot Loyola prof digs into these wounds which still seem fresh to firefighters and says women have no place on the fireline:

Nowadays, with our modern dispensations, we place females in the front lines. This is no less than an abomination. Females are far more precious than males. It is not for nothing that farmers keep a few bulls and hundreds of cows. It is due to patriarchy that we owe our very existence as a species. Imagine if our cave men ancestors had sent their women out to hunt and face the lions and tigers when they came a-calling, instead of throwing themselves at these enemies, sacrificing themselves so that mankind could persist.

Spoken like a cave man.

He goes on to say that fewer firefighters would die if we had no public ownership of lands:

When a forest fire consumes private timber, there are individuals who feel it in their bank accounts; this is not the case with socialized land holdings. This means that the incentives are greater, by how much is an empirical matter, for profit making individuals to take greater precautions regarding their property than is true for their public counterparts. If we have learned anything from the fall of the Soviet economic system – and this is a highly debatable point – it is that things work better under private ownership. These four young people will have not died totally in vain if we use their deaths as a rallying cry for privatization of the forest. Perhaps if we succeed in this effort, other lives will be saved.

Thirtymile fire memorial
Thirtymile fire memorial

The four firefighters killed on the Thirtymile fire were:

Tom L. Craven, 30, Ellensburg, WA;
Karen L. Fitzpatrick, 18, Yakima, WA;
Devin A. Weaver, 21, Yakima, WA;
Jessica L. Johnson, 19, Yakima, WA.

A memorial page for the firefighters can be found here. May they rest in peace.

GAO agrees to investigate USFS’s handling of the Station fire

As we reported on August 6, the two California U.S. senators and several local House members signed a letter asking the Government Accountability Office to look into the management of last year’s Station fire that burned 160,000 acres and killed two firefighters near Los Angeles.

The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, has now agreed to investigate the U. S. Forest Service’s decisions and tactics during the early stages of the fire. There has been criticism that their anemic response to the fire, and their failure to fill firefighters’ requests for air tankers on the morning of the second day of the fire, led to the fire growing from a small fire that morning to the largest fire in the history of Los Angeles County — and the deaths of two firefighters from the Los Angeles County Fire Department.

The U. S. Department of Agriculture’s Inspector General is also investigating the Forest Service’s failure to release recordings of telephone calls radio transmissions related to the fire after they were twice requested by the LA Times using the Freedom of Information Act. The probe by the IG could result in criminal charges, much like their investigation of the Thirtymile wildfire led to felony criminal charges resulting in a firefighter being sentenced to 90 days in a work-release facility and 3 years of probation.