By Jordan Graham and Tony Saavedra
Orange County Register
ORANGE COUNTY, Calif. — The Orange County Fire Authority broke department protocols in its response to the Canyon 2 Fire by not deploying enough equipment after receiving early reports of flames, an independent investigation has determined.
The report bolsters concerns that a bungled response might have allowed a small blaze to grow into the county’s most destructive wildfire in at least a decade.
The investigative report, commissioned by the Fire Authority and released at the agency’s Thursday board meeting, cites two instances on Oct. 9, 2017, in which OCFA dispatchers downplayed 911 calls from people reporting flames and smoke. In both cases, fire officials failed to send appropriate resources. Those mistakes, the report found, delayed the agency’s full response by up to 70 minutes.
By the time the Fire Authority finally treated the incident as an active fire and deployed a larger response, the blaze was too big to be quickly extinguished. The Canyon 2 Fire went on to burn for more than six days, charring 9,200 acres, destroying 15 houses and 10 other structures, and displacing thousands of residents of Anaheim Hills and North Tustin.
The Fire Authority “attempted to validate caller information rather than immediately dispatching a response consistent with department protocols,” the report states. That reaction, county supervisors have said, was particularly inadequate on a day when 50-mph Santa Ana winds were blowing in the area of a recent wildfire.
The report notes that the agency already has taken at least one step to avoid a repeat of that mistake: “Post Canyon 2 Fire, OCFA has a new directive (for) quicker dispatch of emergency resources.”
The report also substantiates an Oct. 2017 investigation by the Register that found a motorist called 911 at 9:28 a.m. to report flames in the burn area of a recent wildfire. Despite a department policy that calls for sending multiple fire engines, bulldozers, air tankers, helicopters and a hand crew during high-risk conditions, the agency deployed a single fire engine, without lights and sirens -- a response known as a “smoke check.” A department-standard deployment wasn’t issued until 9:43 a.m.
Similarly, the investigation found the Fire Authority failed to send a full response to a 911 call that came in at 8:32 a.m., a call that came from a motorist who reported flames in an area where a fire had burned about two weeks earlier. Despite the motorist’s statement about flames, the response didn’t involve sending equipment to the area. Instead, fire personnel at a nearby station looked out their window and dismissed the report as wind-blown ashes.
The probe also notes a discrepancy between an OCFA dispatcher and his supervisor in how the report was handled, with the dispatcher saying the supervisor was told of the 911 call and the supervisor denying it.
A report from fire officials in November said the Canyon 2 blaze was ignited by an ember from an earlier wildfire that had burned days earlier in the same area.
While the 131-page report offers numerous criticisms of how dispatchers responded, it also noted that personnel that morning were battling “smoke fatigue,” after fielding numerous calls from people reporting what they thought was smoke in the burn area, but which turned out to be non-emergencies. That flood of calls, the report said, made all incoming calls difficult to prioritize.
Though the report notes the OCFA’s multiple mistakes in its early response to the fire, it draws no conclusion about whether those mistakes contributed to the eventual devastation.
But on Thursday, under questioning from county Supervisor Todd Spitzer, who sits on the OCFA board, the report’s authors acknowledged that an earlier or more substantial response could have led to a better outcome.
At the meeting, Spitzer also revealed a previously unknown communication failure from the day the fire started.
He said that after the 8:32 a.m. fire report was dismissed as being only floating ash, the California Highway Patrol received and dismissed 10 additional 911 calls from people reporting fires in the same area. But instead of passing the calls on to firefighters, Spitzer said, CHP dispatcher screened the calls and repeated the information presented by Fire Authority personnel -- that it wasn’t a fire. Spitzer said that decision not to forward the information was a violation of protocol.
The report’s authors confirmed Spitzer’s account, saying the information came from audio recording of 911 calls.
“It’s beyond me why the CHP wasn’t transferring those calls to the Fire Authority as they came in,” said former Laguna Niguel city manager Tim Casey, one member of the independent investigative panel.
CHP officials could not immediately be reached for comment on deadline.
In response to its findings, the panel recommended that OCFA improve its dispatch training and protocols, automatically deploy a larger response within some high-risk fire areas, and revise its agreement with the sheriff’s helicopter unit and develop a compatible “public safety aviation program,” among other instructions.
“We’re committed to making all the changes needed so this doesn’t happen again,” said Dave Anderson, acting fire chief for OCFA, told the board Thursday.
Fire Authority leaders also are set to hold a press conference Friday to announce their response to the investigation. Fire Authority Board Chair Ed Sachs, mayor of Mission Viejo, declined to comment on the report until after the meeting. Likewise, OCFA Battalion Chief Marc Stone said he hadn’t read the report and didn’t want to prematurely comment on an independent probe.
“We need to go look at the recommendations,” Stone said. “And we’ll need to fix those or follow-through on those.”
The Orange County Board of Supervisors is expected to issue a separate report on the fire early next month.
Copyright 2018 Orange County Register