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30 Mile Criminal Prosecution, an Agency Slippery Slope
January 7, 2007
I have been agonizing over the recent criminal charges against
Ellreese Daniels, the 30 Mile fire Incident Commander (IC), since I first heard
about it through the media on Wednesday 12/20/06. My emotions have been on a
roller coaster since that day, feeling surprise, anger and disgust, that a
Agency employee, 5 ½ years later, could be charged with involuntary
manslaughter, in the four tragic deaths on the 30 Mile Fire. Why now, 5- ½ years
later, have these accusations surfaced?? My heart goes out to the families of
Tom Craven, Devin Weaver, Jessica Johnson, and Karen Fitzpatrick, whose lives
were lost July 10th, 2001, but criminal charges will not change what happened
that terrible day. Since that day, the USFS has changed a lot of policies and
procedures, in an attempt to prevent a reoccurrence in the future. We have
checklists, pocket cards, incident organizers, changes in IC collateral duties,
and a renewing of the agencies passion for firefighter safety. I am sure that
everyone involved in the 30 mile fire and the fire community will always
remember what happened that day, and do their best to prevent it from happening
again.
I have worked for the USFS for 32+ years, all in fire, and I have seen the
agency make great progress in firefighter safety. The fire environment is a very
dynamic, evolving, hazardous place. It can rapidly change from a smoldering,
docile fire, to a rapidly changing, explosive situation, in very short order,
which requires a change of tactics, and strategies. An IC has got to make split
second decisions, taking into account all sorts of variables. Sometimes
hindsight tells us that maybe some of those choices were not the correct one, or
maybe a variable was not picked up on, but hindsight is always 20/20. That’s why
now we do what’s called a After Action Review (AAR), so we can critique what
happened on a fire, and if mistakes were made, we can learn from them to prevent
them from happening in the future. We put tremendous pressure on our IC’s to
provide for firefighter safety, protect lives and property, be cost effective,
comply with land management policies, etc, all while working in a very dangerous
environment. The IC doesn’t get any more money for performing these duties for
the Agency, in fact it isn’t even in any of our job descriptions, we do it
because it a job that needs to be done, and we take great pride in our “can do”
attitude.
Since 30 Mile, and the changes in policies, procedures, training
requirements, re- certifications, etc, we have seen our IC ranks thinned by
people that said it wasn’t worth it anymore. We lost even more IC’s when the
Agency started saying that we should start buying professional liability
insurance. Then we saw criminal charges against the Cramer Fire IC and even more
IC’s left the ranks. What does the Agency think will happen now that criminal
charges are filed against the 30 Mile IC? If the Agency will not stand up and
stop criminal prosecutions from being levied against their employees, then I
suspect there will be more people that refuse to perform IC duties, or other
Operation positions.
I have tried to think of an instance of criminal charges being filed in a
fatal accident, either in the private of public sector, and none come to mind.
Even in the loss of the space shuttle and crew, and the accident investigation
pointed to numerous mistakes, no charges were filed, nobody lost their jobs, but
they used it as a learning tool to prevent future accidents.
The Agency is heading down a very slippery slope in not standing up and
saying, yes mistakes were made, we will strive to prevent them happening in the
future, but our employee did not do anything criminal. We need to support our
employees, and not let them think that the Agency will allow them to be used as
a political scapegoat. We take great pride in our 98% initial attack success
rate, but to continue to be able to meet that goal our IC’s need to know that
the Agency will stand behind them, even if a tragic accident happens on their
watch.
I can only hope that our Agencies National Leadership, will take a long hard
look at this situation, and come up with a strategy to support our employees on
the ground that volunteer to perform these IC duties. We need to start having
that dialogue now, so we can assure our IC’s, that we appreciate what they do
for us, and that we will stand along side of them if a tragic accident takes
place.
/s/ Rod Altig
Fire Management Officer
Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area
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