On a Slippery Slope
In July 2003 during the Cramer Fire above Idaho's Salmon River, two Forest Service helicopter rappellers were burned over and died on a Type III incident on their home forest. Three separate investigations were conducted, one by the USFS; another by the Department of Agriculture's Office of Inspector General; and a third by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which is required by law to look at any fatality of federal employees. OSHA found the USFS liable for five violations, three classified as serious, one as willful and one as a repeat.
As a result of these investigations, the USFS decided to take administrative actions against some of their employees, ranging from letters of reprimand to termination of employment. Although it has been more than 18 months since the fatalities, most of those administrative actions have not been resolved within the USFS.
But in my opinion, the most significant actions resulting from the Cramer Fire fatalities are those taken by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Boise, Idaho: They explored, based on the findings of the three investigations and additional information that they had gathered, bringing criminal charges against the incident commander. A pre-trial agreement was reached in December in which the IC lost his job and would be on federal probation for 18 months.
Fighting wildland fires is a curious mix of science and art in a rapidly changing environment, with an often-unknown combination of factors determining what occurs. Since my first wildfire suppression action in the mid-1960s, I've never been 100% sure that all my actions and reactions were absolutely correct and by-the-book. And the “book” becomes thicker and more complex every year. It's relatively easy for an outsider, with weeks and months to review the decisions I had to make in seconds or minutes, to compare those decisions against the hundreds of pages of direction found in the Fireline Handbook, the Red Book, the Incident Response Pocket Guide, and various training manuals that cover the past 40 years, and find errors in my judgment or decision-making. Does that make my conduct criminal?
Throughout my career, I've been blessed to never have a firefighter seriously hurt or killed while working under my direction, but I'd be a fool to think that this was all the result of nothing but skill, ability and experience; pure, dumb luck has kept me, and the firefighters who have worked with me, out of harm's way more than once — and out of the U.S. Attorney Office's gunsight. For that, I'm eternally grateful.
So, where do the extended-attack incident commanders of the 21st century stand after the actions of that U.S. attorney? Are they going to risk their careers, homes and jail time to take charge of fires that are threatening to burn out of control into valuable natural resources and/or into residential areas? How about initial-attack incident commanders? What about prescribed-burn bosses who knowingly and willingly light fires in the woods?
I have this newfound fear that wildland fire has entered a slippery slope that we won't find it easy to get off of in the coming years, and that the fallout from the Cramer Fire will ripple throughout the wildland fire community worldwide, resulting in fewer and fewer folks willing to take the personal risks required to be an IC on a wildfire or prescribed burn. If that happens, the land and the public that we serve will suffer the consequences.
Maybe a U.S. attorney will step up and become an incident commander during a busy fire season.
International Assn. of Wildland Fire
P.O. Box 261
Hot Springs, S.D.
57747-0261
ph: 605-890-2348
fax: 206-600-5113
iawf@iawfonline.org
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Wildfire Magazine
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Attn: Lisa Allegretti
lallegretti@primediabusiness.com
