Crews ignored safety rules in killer wildfire, paper says

Associated Press

SEATTLE — In the hours before the Thirty Mile wildfire killed four firefighters, crews broke critical safety rules and did not heed signs the fire was becoming too dangerous to fight, a Seattle newspaper reported Sunday.

The federal government is expected to release results of its investigation into the July 10 deaths on Wednesday. Forest Service officials have declined to discuss the report before its release.

But Forest Service firefighters who battled the fire in the Okanogan National Forest say there was a chain of mishaps and mistakes.

As the fire grew, so did the mistakes and their consequences, the newspaper reports.

For example, several firefighters weren’t told the Forest Service road they traveled was a dead end. Crews were sent up that road to battle spot fires, violating the cardinal rule that firefighters always have two escape routes.

Minutes later, their only way out was cut off by flames, 14 trapped firefighters scrambled into aluminum shelters. Four — Tom Craven, 30; Karen FitzPatrick, 18; Devin Weaver, 21; and Jessica Johnson, 19 — died there.

The fire had grown from 25 to 2,500 acres in a little more than two hours.

The blaze began with a runaway campfire along the Chewuch River, spotted late July 9. The elite Entiat Hotshots crew worked the blaze overnight. In the morning, a crew of 21 firefighters, mostly seasonal employees and several rookies, arrived to relieve them.

As the day grew hot, the fire became more active. By midafternoon, it had breached fire lines. Crews retreated to the riverside road to eat lunch and rest, watching flames climb the canyon’s 3,000-foot southeast wall.

Barry George, assistant fire-management officer of the Methow Valley Ranger District, stopped by and asked the group — led by 24-year Forest Service veteran Ellreese Daniels and crew-boss trainee Pete Kampen — to keep the fire from crossing the road.

When engine foreman Harry Dunn reported "spot" fires threatening to do just that a few hundred yards up the canyon, the crew got back to work.

At this point, several say, critical rules were broken.

In wildland firefighting, safety tactics are distilled in a list of "Ten Standard Fire Orders." Firefighters are supposed to know the rules, and to speak up with any concerns.

Here are the orders firefighters say were violated:

"Ensure that instructions are given and understood."

Crew members dispatched to tackle the spot fires were not briefed about the strategy that afternoon.

"We were just told to get in the van, we’re going to check spot fires," said rookie Matthew Rutman.

"When we got up there, we never got briefed by the IC," or incident commander, said Tim Schmekel, whose Methow Valley Ranger District engine crew had arrived that afternoon.

"Determine safety zones and escape routes."

Before firefighters went to tend the spot fires, leaders did not announce new "safety zones," said several firefighters. Multiple escape routes — paths leading to the safety zones — were not established on the dead-end road. And some firefighters did not know that the road was a dead end until they were trapped.

"We even made a joke of it: ‘Where’s our escape routes? Where’s the safety zones?’ " said Schmekel, an assistant foreman and five-season veteran. "Why didn’t we say anything?"

"I said, ‘Funny, we don’t have safety zones and escape routes identified. Should we do something about this?’ " recalled Andy Floyd, an assistant engine foreman and veteran of eight fire seasons.

But "the fire was not doing a whole lot. It was burning up the other side of the valley, away from us," he said.

"Recognize current weather conditions and obtain forecasts."

Weather was unchanged from the previous day — extremely hot and dry. The fire crew did not get an updated forecast that morning, Kampen said after the fire.

The Hotshot crew took weather readings later that day, but the information — near-record temperatures and single-digit relative humidity — was not well-distributed, firefighters say.

The information could have reminded leaders that conditions were ripe for a "blow-up," an extraordinary increase in fire size.

"Initiate all action based on current and expected fire behavior."

Some firefighters at the scene say the fire was moving away from them when it unexpectedly lashed back through green shrubbery and thick trees as part of a blow-up.

But there were "all sorts of warning signs" that a big fire could erupt, said Mark Finney, a Forest Service research forester familiar with the fire’s behavior that day.

Dry, tightly packed spruce and fir grew up the steep valley walls — posing the threat that flames surging up one side could leap to the other.

Another problem — unrelated to the fire orders — had to do with a requested water drop.

Kampen had asked dispatchers just after noon to send a helicopter to dump buckets of water on the fire. Dispatchers delayed for two hours, wrongly assuming water could not be drawn from a river containing threatened species without permission, the Forest Service has said.

"I think if we’d had the water when we’d asked for it, none of this would have happened," Daniels has said.

Several firefighters also noted the lack of attention given the Thirty Mile fire before the blow-up — in part because officials were distracted by an out-of-control, 1,000-acre fire threatening homes near Winthrop.

"Sitting in an air-conditioned office after the fact, you can make all kinds of judgments," Kampen told the newspaper.

"In the heat of the moment you make the best decisions you can."