By Guy McCarthy
San Gabriel Valley Tribune (California)
Copyright 2006 MediaNews Group, Inc. and Los Angeles Newspaper Group, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Even though a jailed arson suspect is facing murder charges in the deaths of five firefighters in the Esperanza Fire, some U.S. Forest Service employees fear they too could be targeted for blame.
At least four separate investigations are under way to explain exactly what happened Oct. 26 on Gorgonio View Road in Twin Pines, where the crew of Engine 57 perished in a burnover while trying to protect a home.
Some Forest Service employees are particularly wary of an investigation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of the Inspector General.
Veteran firefighters and advocate groups worry it will focus on assigning blame in the Esperanza Fire deaths rather than identifying lessons that can improve firefighter safety in future blazes.
“I am concerned there is a need to introduce the human perspective into firefighting investigations, to ensure we learn as much as we can from these tragedies,” said Richard J. Mangan, Montana-based president of the nonprofit International Association of Wildland Fire.
Mangan helped investigate the 1994 Storm King deaths of 14 smokejumpers and firefighters in Colorado.
“Too often,” he said, “we look at weather, fuels and fire behavior, but we don’t look at human factors.
“With Engine 57, these guys lived nearby and they were protecting their own community. I’d let a house burn down in some instances. But put me in my own community, and that might change things. That’s a human factor to be considered”
A lobbying and advocacy group called the Federal Wildland Fire Service Association has started a legal defense fund for anyone who was in a decision-making position at the scene of the burnover on Gorgonio View, from engine operators on up.
“We were asked by some of our folks to look into availability of legal counsel,” said Casey Judd, the association’s business manager, who is based in Idaho.
“Some have already secured the help of a legal defense team who worked on the Cramer Fire,” Judd said Monday.
Judd was referring to the July 2003 Cramer Fire in the Salmon-Challis National Forest in central Idaho. Two firefighters who rappelled from a helicopter to clear brush on a steep slope died when they were overrun by flames.
In the wake of investigations that followed, six Forest Service managers were disciplined, including an incident commander who left his job and served 18 months on federal probation.
The criminal prosecution stemmed in part from a U.S. Department of Agriculture inspector general’s investigation mandated by a 2002 law, Judd said.
Mike Dietrich, fire chief for the San Bernardino National Forest, said he tells all his management employees to protect themselves with insurance.
“Because of this new law, every Forest Service employee who’s in a management position should have professional liability insurance,” Dietrich said. “This is a case of arson where federal employees have died, and I don’t know what the outcome will be as far as the \ investigation.”
The 2002 Hastings Cantwell Act calls for an independent investigation of any Forest Service firefighter death caused by wildfire entrapment or burnover. Lawmakers cited four firefighter deaths in the 2001 Thirtymile Fire in Washington state, and the 1994 Storm King tragedy.
Paul Feeney, deputy counsel for the USDA inspector general in Washington, D.C., said Tuesday his office has dispatched investigators to the site of the Esperanza Fire deaths.
He said he could not discuss details of the inspector general’s investigation.
“We’re not trying to be coy or secretive,” Feeney said in a phone interview. “We’re just trying to do our work.”
Mangan raised several concerns about the inspector general’s anticipated approach.
“When we’re on the fire line, we have a decision-making space of seconds,” Mangan said. “But the U.S. attorney can take two and a half years to review everything I did in my whole career and my training.”
Before the Cramer Fire disciplinary and criminal actions, firefighters who witnessed or took part in fatal incidents were more open and forthcoming about discussing details that could improve firefighter safety, Mangan said.
“On the Thirtymile Fire, people were honest - `Hey, I screwed up,”’ Mangan said. “It was about lessons learned, not slamming your \ and putting you in jail.”
Because the Esperanza Fire is only the second time the USDA inspector general has been assigned to a burnover or entrapment situation with Forest Service firefighter fatalities, many people are worried, Mangan said.
Fear of discipline or prosecution may discourage people from sharing information that could enhance firefighter safety, Mangan said.
“Everybody is looking very, very carefully at what comes out of Esperanza,” Mangan said. “Could they say if these guys didn’t follow their training, that they screwed up, that it was not the arsonist’s fault they died? It’s raising this kind of first-time questions.”
Mangan and others who have worked on previous firefighter fatality investigations have been critical of the process.
Ted Putnam, an 11-year smokejumper, fire-behavior specialist and psychologist based in Montana, studied the fatal fires at Storm King and other cases of firefighter fatalities before he retired in 1998.
Last year, Putnam received an International Association of Wildland Fire Safety Award and the Paul Gleason Lead by Example Award at a 10-year reunion conference addressing human factors in wildland firefighting.
Putnam is an outspoken critic of fire agency fatality investigations.
“Stress, fear and panic predictably lead to the collapse of clear thinking and organizational structure,” Putnam said in a 1995 paper for the Forest Service on decision-making breakdowns that preceded the Storm King deaths.
“While these psychological and social processes have been well studied in the military and the aircraft industry, the wildland fire community has not supported similar research for the fire line,” Putnam said.
“The fatal wildland fire entrapments of recent memory have a tragic common denominator: human error. The lesson is clear: Studying the human side of fatal wildland fire accidents is overdue.”