Category: Featured

Wildland firefighters in the Departments of Agriculture and Interior need to be exfiltrated, and given refuge in the Department of Homeland Security

September 10, 2021 – By Bill Gabbert –

Since March, 2020, 680 U.S. Forest Service employees in the agency’s California Region have tested positive for COVID-19 according to Anthony Scardina on September 7, 2021, the Deputy Regional Forester for State and Private Forestry. Of those, 561 were wildland firefighters, he said. *Stanton Florea, Fire Communications Specialist for the Forest Service at the National Interagency Fire Center said on Sept. 8 that approximately 918 wildland fire employees within the entire agency have tested positive for the virus.

Mr. Florea said they do not formally track the number of their employees that have been hospitalized with COVID.

In the last week word leaked that one of those firefighters who tested positive died due to the coronavirus, and a reporter discovered that another died of an unspecified illness. Subsequently, the Lassen National Forest released a statement late at night September 5 confirming the two fatalities and the names of the deceased, but nothing about the cause of death, dates, or the location.

Marcus Pacheco was an assistant engine operator who had 13 years of fire experience with CAL FIRE and 30 with the FS. He died of an unspecified illness while working on the Dixie Fire.

Allen Johnson was a semi-retired 40-year FS veteran and was serving as a Liaison Officer on an Incident Management Team on the French Fire when he contracted COVID.

During an interview September 7 with Wildfire Today we asked Mr. Scardina how many FS firefighters had died in the line of duty after contracting COVID.

“I’m not going to report fatalities of our employees when it comes to personal illnesses and other privacy matters in terms of deaths at this point in time,” he said.  “We’re taking a look at those situations, what the review process will be to make sure we understand the facts. And it’s just simply too early out of respect for the family of being appropriate for us to comment at this point in time on those situations.

The deaths were first officially announced to the public in a manner more formal than Facebook Sept. 7, 2021 by Mr. Scardina at a news conference. It was tweeted by both the FS and the California Office of Emergency Services. The CAL OES recording below had much better audio than the FS version.

On September 8 Mr. Florea said there have been two deaths of FS fire personnel that are suspected to be related to COVID. Requests for more details, such as names, dates, name of fire, or location did not receive a response, so it is not certain if these two are the fatalities disclosed by Mr. Scardina on September 7, who also provided no details.

Historically the FS has disclosed fatalities within 24 to 48 hours. The agency usually waits until the families are notified before releasing the names of the deceased, which may take a little longer. Most of the time the general circumstances will also be released, such as hit by a falling tree, vehicle accident, or entrapped by a fire. But for firefighters who contracted COVID on the job, the FS has been extremely reluctant to disclose any information about these line of duty hospitalizations and deaths. The agency’s public information officers whose job is to inform America about FS activities, fires, and circumstances that affect the health and safety of their employees and the public, have been keeping it secret, slow-walking and dissembling when finally responding to requests from journalists about line of duty illnesses and deaths of fire personnel.

One firefighter told Wildfire Today about something he noticed about supervisory personnel at fires. “I’m noticing that all Incident Management Team members are wearing wristbands and being screened everyday,” he said. “This is not happening for firefighters. They are wearing colored wristbands to show they cleared the screening, but nothing for firefighters.”

The firefighter said in order to help protect his family when he got home, he asked to get tested while being demobilized from the fire, but the request was denied.

We are hearing rumblings that some fires are being hit very hard by COVID, with large numbers of personnel testing positive or being quarantined but this is difficult to confirm without the agencies’ cooperation.

Opinion

Fighting wildfires has always had a long list of recognized risks. An analysis by the National Interagency Fire Center determined that from 1990 through 2014 there were 440 fatalities in the line of duty among wildland firefighters. The top four categories which accounted for 88 percent of the deaths were, in decreasing order, medical issues (usually heart related), aircraft accidents, vehicle accidents, and being entrapped by the fire.

The COVID pandemic adds a new category and level of risk from which these firefighters now have to defend themselves. They already wear Kevlar chaps to prevent a chain saw from cutting into their leg, a helmet, leather gloves, hearing protection, safety glasses, fire resistant shirts and pants, and a five-pound foldable shelter to climb under when entrapped by a fire.

Many of these highly-trained firefighters comprise more than 100 hotshot crews. They are tactical athletes who carry more than 30 pounds of gear up and down steep, rugged terrain for up to 16 hours every day while battling a fire, sometimes miles from the nearest vehicle. They immerse themselves in wildland fire science and fire behavior to anticipate what the fire will do in order to avoid unnecessary exposure to risks.

But now their employer, the US Forest Service, is reluctant to fully disclose to them a key fact related to their safety — how many of their fellow firefighters have been hospitalized or killed in the line of duty by COVID.

The FS has not been disclosing COVID line of duty deaths the same way they announced that two firefighters were killed in an airplane crash or one died after being hit by a falling tree, all within the last two months.

COVID among firefighters is not really a “personal illness”, as described Mr. Scardina, when it is caused by a requirement from their employer, for example, to travel across the country and work with 4,809 others at the Dixie Fire in California. For decades the Forest Service and the other four federal land management agencies have, as far as we know, reported all line of duty deaths, including illnesses such as cardiac issues, which might be described as a “personal illness”.

It is puzzling that the leadership in the federal wildland fire organizations are so scared or reluctant to talk about the effects of COVID on their work force. I don’t see any upside in a doomed-to-fail effort to keep it secret. Maybe it is a holdover thought process from the previous administration whose leader said at least 38 times in 2020 between February and October that COVID-19 is either going to disappear or is currently disappearing.

By refusing to be transparent about pandemic related illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths on the job, the perception could be that the government has something to hide or they want to restrict the disclosure of news that could reflect negatively on the administration. It would be impossible to argue that withholding this information is in the best interests of the employees. And it degrades the trust that an employee would hope to have in their leadership.

Far more important than protecting the political future of the President, is being honest with their firefighters about the degree of risk they are taking while serving their country battling wildfires.

Something has to change

Federal wildland firefighters work for the Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, and the National Park Service. The first responsibility of these agencies is the safety of their personnel, including the 15,000 firefighters. If they are so cavalier about this responsibility to not even care how many have been hospitalized in the line of duty, and keep secret as much as possible the extent of how many have gotten seriously ill or died from COVID while working for them, then something has to change.

The primary job of these five agencies is not fighting fire — it is very far from it. They inspect meat packing plants, issue what used to be called Food Stamps, clean rest rooms, manage visitors, and grow trees. Those at the top of the Departments of Agriculture and the Interior where they presently reside, in most cases have no background in emergency services. It is not in their DNA to worry night and day about those under their command being injured or killed in the line of duty. Career fire personnel understand this.

The firefighters in these five agencies need to be exfiltrated from the DOI and DOA and given refuge in a new agency within the Department of Homeland Security where top management pays attention to the risks emergency management personnel face. If I was a betting man, I would wager that they care how many of their employees have been killed or hospitalized by COVID, at least publicly to the extent allowed by the White House.

This new agency of 15,000 wildland firefighters could be named National Fire Service. It could even welcome the structural firefighters that work for the Department of Defense.

With the massive Caldor and Dixie fires still burning, California’s fire season is on course to match the record 4.2 million acres burned last year.

September 8, 2021 – By Michael Cabanatuan – Source San Francisco Chronicle

Sep. 8—With the once-unstoppable Caldor Fire racing to the doorstep of South Lake Tahoe before it was steered away, and the Dixie Fire, the second largest in state history, still raging farther north, it’s been a hellish fire season in Northern California.

And it’s not over, Cal Fire Director Chief Thom Porter cautioned Tuesday morning.

“We are on a par with where we were last year,” he said during a briefing. “That’s sobering, that’s the new reality, that’s what we are looking at.”

Fires burned through roughly 2 million acres by this time in 2020, he said, on the way to a total of 4.2 million acres — the worst in the state’s long history of wildfires. So far this year, fires have again ripped through 2 million acres, with the devastation continuing.

“We could be in the same boat,” he said. “We’re right in the middle of wildfire peak season.”

Forecasters predict the next three months will bring more dry weather and bouts of gusty winds, Porter said.

“Fire activity will continue to grow,” he said.

Anthony Scardina, a deputy regional forester with the U.S. Forest Service, said hot and windy weather is expected across the state for the next two days.

Despite warming temperatures, firefighters took advantage of gentler winds to make progress on the Caldor Fire, which began its march toward Lake Tahoe more than three weeks ago. It was 50% contained Tuesday, and most South Lake Tahoe residents have been allowed to return home after a week under evacuation orders.

But the danger is not over. The fire, which erupted near Grizzly Flats in rural western El Dorado County on Aug. 14 and has burned through 217,000 acres, on Tuesday continued to threaten Kirkwood, the ski resort and small community south of Lake Tahoe on Highway 88.

While the fire remained calm in South Lake Tahoe, it was still active in Kirkwood, with fire spreading through the tops of trees and wind throwing flaming embers well ahead of the fire, starting spot fires more often than not.

“For every 10 sparks that land in the forest, nine of them light fire,” said Dominic Polito, a Caldor Fire spokesperson.

In addition to chasing and snuffing out spot fires, firefighters have been taking advantage of light winds to set backfires and burn off potential fuel around houses and other structures in the area, he said.

The Kirkwood area and other areas along Highway 88 remained evacuated. Thirty helicopters were expected to make water drops in the area on Tuesday, pouring hundreds of thousands of gallons on the fire.

Fire crews have extended containment lines from Meyers along Pioneer Trail in South Lake Tahoe, which allowed authorities to lift mandatory evacuation orders for most of the city, particularly the areas near the lake, said Jaime Moore, a spokesperson for the eastern edge of the fire.

Evacuation orders remained in effect near Heavenly Mountain resort, where crews were extinguishing some hot spots and keeping an eye out for small fires that start when sparks jump containment lines. Meyers and Christmas Valley, where the flames first entered the Tahoe Basin, also remained evacuated, in part due to danger from a large number of charred trees in danger of falling, Moore said.

“When you’re looking at South Lake Tahoe itself, mostly the threat is gone, but obviously we don’t want to get complacent and say the threat is gone,” he said. “Mother Nature has been working in our favor, but things can change.”

Crews were keeping an eye on the winds, which had been light and from the west but were forecast to shift to the southwest and may pick up speed, Moore said.

Mark Ghilarducci, California Office of Emergency Services director, urged returnees to remain vigilant.

“Even though these area have been repopulated, it’s still important to remember that we have active fire in the areas. We are not out of the woods yet.”

Forty miles away on the west end of the fire, in addition to Kirkwood, the blaze was most active in the Wrights Lake area, where fire crews have to hike in or get dropped in, Polito said. Much of the area near where the fire started has had evacuation orders lifted, and residents returned over the weekend — except in the town of Grizzly Flats, which was devastated by the fire and is filled with utility crews and tree trimmers.

Despite the voracity of this year’s fires, Cal Fire’s Porter said firefighters have saved several communities from the flames: South Lake Tahoe, Meyers, Pollock Pines, Sly Park, Hayfork, Willits, Chester, Lake Almanor West, Westwood, Susanville and Janesville.

“All were protected, all are still intact,” he said. “We’ve been able to herd these fires outside and around the main community corridors. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to do that everywhere, but these are some of the large communities that have been protected.”

The Dixie Fire, which ignited July 14 and is still burning across five counties to the north of the Caldor Fire, was 59% contained on Tuesday. The Dixie Fire had grown to more than 919,000 acres — threatening to rival California’s largest wildfire, the August Complex, which consumed 1,032,648 acres last year.

Near Auburn in Placer County, evacuations were lifted Tuesday for the Bridge Fire, which was 411 acres and 50% contained after erupting Sunday under the Foresthill Bridge. The Auburn State Recreation Area remained closed.

(c)2021 the San Francisco Chronicle

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