..
This afternoon, Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich called upon Congress to initiate a Congressional Inquiry into the handling of Station Fire.
Supervisor Antonovich based his request on conflicting information that was obtained by the LA Times under the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
The Los Angeles Times contends that they have found discrepancies between the documents they uncovered, and the official report on the Station Fire produced by the U.S. Forest Service last month.
Last evening, the Los Angeles Times released the first article titled, Records show no mention of terrain in withholding aircraft during Station fire. To read that article: CLICK HERE.
In that article, former Angeles National Forest Fire Chief Donald Feser made the following statements:
“It just irks me to see . . . that they’re blaming the terrain for why no action was taken,” said Don Feser, a former fire chief for the forest who retired in 2007. “They’re just making excuses.”
“I’ve covered a lot of that ground, and there is only a small percentage of land that is too steep to put firefighters on,” said Feser, who worked in the Angeles National Forest for 26 years, the last seven as fire chief. “And if we can’t put firefighters on it, guess what we do? We use aircraft.”
This evening at 5:12 PM (PT), the Los Angeles Times published a second article titled, Supervisor calls for federal probe of Station fire operations after Times report raises questions. To read that article: CLICK HERE.
In the article, Supervisor Antonovich is quoted as saying the following:
“Did the members of the investigative committee have access to this information? If they did, they are responsible for misleading the public,” he said. “As a result of the (Forest Service) leadership’s failure … we lost two fine, brave firefighters.”
Those are some pretty pointed accusations. Undoubtedly, things are going to get a lot uglier as the situation continues to snow ball. See the post from last Friday for more background.
Next month, the report on deaths of LACoFD Fire Capt. Ted Hall and Firefighter Specialist Arnie Quinones is expected to be released to the public. Rumor has it, that the report was completed by the CAL FIRE SART team and it has been submitted to the LACoFD Executive Leadership and County Counsel for review.
To help put things into perspective in this political showing by Supervisor Antonovich, here is an excellent article on the L.A. County Board of Supervisors.
I have to wonder if it would just be better to put all of the “fire chiefs” into one room and let them work it out….. just as was done during FIRESCOPE in the early 70’s through the late 80’s? Chief Officers know how to cut through the crap… do what’s right… and share Lessons Learned…. keep the media and politics out of discussions?
Update – 10:00 PM (PT):
Representative Adam Schiff has jumped on the bandwagon also. Another online L.A. Times article was published by Mr. Pringle. This time a third article within the last 24 hours is titled, Rep. Schiff to seek inquiry into Station Fire response. To read that article: CLICK HERE.
A local House member says he will ask Congress to launch an inquiry next month into the U.S. Forest Service’s response to the Station fire, including a decision to withhold water-dropping aircraft during the critical second day of the blaze.
“Congress really ought to investigate and determine if the right calls were made,” Schiff said. “I hope that we can have an oversight hearing and get to the bottom of this.”
Three weeks before the blaze, the Forest Service instructed supervisors to cut costs by limiting the use of reinforcements from other fire agencies. Los Angeles County helicopters helped keep the Station fire to 15 acres the first day, but the Forest Service did not bring them back in the same numbers on Day 2. Forest Service officials said costs did not influence their tactics.Schiff said the inquiry by the Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies would also determine if the Forest Service has enough aircraft for its mission and whether it has “the right policies in place.”
All references to LA Times Investigative Reporter Paul Pringle’s Inquisition “from another website” : CLICK HERE . Here is an example of the commentary:
I think there are sentiments out there that these LA Times articles are not part of a just culture and counter productive to the learning process. At first that is what I thought about these articles too. Paul Pringle is an award winning journalist, and is known for his articles that exposed corruption in the SEIU a few years ago, and certainly good at what he does-digging up dirt to sell news papers. WTF does he know about managing a fire, and who is he to question decisions made on the ground? He has no friggin clue what that R5 memo means, and it is probably totally irrelevant to the Station Fire. Be that as it may, milehighbar made an excellent point, that maybe he is examining a deeper issue, the issues within the system. Then I saw it a little bit differently- maybe there are questions to be raised. Read all 4 of his articles- he’s asking some legitimate questions. Are cost containment objectives, sent down by the powers that be, hindering effective wildland fire management? Should Line Officers and people who haven’t seen the fire, or ever even been on a fire, be making the many important decisions that need to be made about a particular fire? There’s a lot of dissension among the ranks- how long can it go on? The list of questions goes on. Did any of these causal factors in the system create a missed oppurtunity? We will never know whether it was decisions that were made, or whether it was mother nature that allowed the Station Fire to become “one angry fire.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Forest Service: Station Fire Initial Attack Review:
CLICK HERE
Appendices A & B:
CLICK HERE
Appendices C, D, & E:
CLICK HERE
Members of the Forest Service Review Panel were:
James Hubbard (Team Lead)
Deputy Chief of State and Private Forestry
Washington Office, Forest Service
Tom Harbour
Director of Fire and Aviation Management
Washington Office, Forest Service
John Tripp
Chief Deputy – Operations
Los Angeles County Fire Department
Ken Pimlott
Deputy Director, Chief of Fire Protection
California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection
Donald MacGregor, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist
MacGregor Bates, Incorporated
READY! SET! GO! Personal Wildfire Action Plan from Mike Antonovich on Vimeo.
..
Posted by RamblingChief 
RamblingChief.Com 
