By Ann Imse
Rocky Mountain News (Denver, Colorado)
Copyright 2006 Denver Publishing Company
On a breezy, hot September day in Utah in the midst of the 2003 drought, Forest Service District Ranger Bill Ott started a million-dollar-plus fire.
He was the burn boss on a prescribed burn meant to clear out scrub oak brush on 600 acres. But Ott also lit the fire in an area that wasn’t supposed to burn at all, according to a review of the fire, interviews and published reports.
The flames took off. They quickly consumed nearly 8,000 acres of the Uinta National Forest. The Cascade II fire filled the skies of Salt Lake City with a thick blanket of smoke. More than 500 firefighters and a dozen aircraft assaulted the flames.
Since then, Ott has been promoted to assistant director of fire operations for the Rocky Mountain region of the Forest Service. That makes him second in command for fires in a five-state region.
Ott’s current boss, regional forester Rick Cables in Denver, said he did not know of Ott’s role in the Cascade II fire when he was promoted.
But Cables said he’s certain that “whoever was responsible or culpable would have been disciplined.”
There was nothing in Ott’s personnel file to keep him from being promoted, and Ott’s boss at the time, Intermountain Regional Forester Jack Troyer in Utah supported his promotion, Cables said.
Ott has done a “top-notch” job, Cables said, in overseeing fire operations and representing the Forest Service on the Rocky Mountain Coordinating Group, which runs inter-agency firefighting.
Ott did not return several phone calls seeking comment.
Uinta Forest spokeswoman Erin O’Conner said the final cost of putting out the Cascade II fire was $541,000.
She did not have rehabilitation costs, but newspapers said it was between $800,000 and $1.2 million.
The official review of the blaze, written by experts from inside and outside the Forest Service, concluded: “The primary cause of this escape (from the burn) was the decision to ignite the additional 400 acres” outside the planned prescribed burn area.
“The area was intentionally ignited without additional analysis or the necessary line officer approval,” the report said.
O’Conner confirmed that the burn boss decided to move down the road and ignite more oak brush. The review does not name him, nor the author of the burn plan, who also was found at fault. O’Conner would not name them, either.
But Ott was identified as the fire boss in a Salt Lake Tribune story at the time. In addition, Sheldon Wimmer, fire chief of the Utah Bureau of Land Management and a member of the review team, said, “Bill Ott was the burn boss. He can give you a blow-by-blow account.”
Ott moved up in the Forest Service. The author of the burn plan was fired, Wimmer said.
Troyer, at the time of the blaze, promised local citizens he would “seek accountability” for the Cascade II fire. O’Conner refused to detail efforts to make good on that promise, saying personnel actions are private.
When O’Conner was asked if lighting a fire outside the prescribed burn area was a major issue, she replied, “Oh yes . . . We acknowledge that mistakes were made.”
The burn boss, she said, had no authority to start the fire where he did.
Though the review was supposed to determine what went wrong so the mistake would not be repeated, it contains no information about what prompted Ott’s action. It devotes just five sentences to the actual cause of the fire, and goes on for 25 pages to detail wind, fire behavior, air quality and the poorly written burn plan.
The report said the decision to ignite the extra acres was made without an analysis of the nearby steep slope, dry plants and larger fire area. The report also pointed out that there was no plan to fight the fire should it escape its boundaries.
O’Conner said the report was thorough and there was never any question of criminal charges.
The report also blames the author of the burn plan, saying the document lacked many required elements and “contributed to the confusion in executing this prescribed fire.” In particular, it says the ignition plan was difficult to understand.
In its response to the review, the Forest Service stated that in the future, any changes in proposed burn areas or contingency areas must be analyzed and signed off on in advance.
Four months after the review, Ott published on a Guide to a Successful Prescribed Burn.
It warns that burn bosses should not adjust burn plans and should know what constitutes a “minor revision.”
And it warns that prescribed burns that go out of control will bring considerable heat on the agency, while individuals may experience “personal distress over ‘mission’ failure.”
The Forest Service adopted the BLM’s prescribed burn guide after the Cascade II fire, because it was much more strict about requiring detailed review of plans by experts and precise execution by the burn boss, Wimmer said.