Crime & Safety

Forest Service Panned for Station Fire Response at Altadena Meeting

Critics contend that the Forest Service should have had air resources on the fire during the night, among other criticisms.

Forest Service officials said Thursday that through a contract with the L.A. County Fire Department, the agency will be able to have air craft carry out night time water drops to help control wild fires in the upcoming fire season.

The Forest Service has come under criticism over the last two years from local, county, and congressional leaders for not having helicopters and planes up in the air at night during the 2009 Station Fire, which some contend allowed the blaze to get out of control.

But while the Forest Service's contract with the county does provide them with those air resources, the agency's air fleet will still not have enough pilots to allow for them to use their own planes at night at least through this fire season.  That could mean that if county air resources are needed at a fire or for a medical emergency outside of the Angeles
National Forest, the Forest Service might not have those night resources available.

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The Forest Service's long-term policy getting enough resources to reinstate night flying with their own fleet is still under review, nearly two years after the record-setting Station Fire, which burned almost 250 square miles in August and September of 2009.

The issue, said Tom Harbourthe Director of Fire and Aviation at the Forest Service, is whether the government has the financial resources to provide for the extra air crew staffing that night flying would require.

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"We've been studying the issue the last couple of months, whether the acquisition of resources is one worth pursuing," Harbour said.  "A detailed economic feasibility study is under way."

Harbour addressed the issue at a public meeting at the Altadena Library on Thursday that was hosted by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena.  Also in attendance was Stephen Gaty, the assistant director of the Government Accountability Office, which is reviewing whether the Forest Service properly managed the Station Fire in 2009.

Many of those in attendance were home owners in the Angeles National Forest who lost their homes to the blaze in 2009, and who have contended that the Forest Service badly mismanaged their air resources, communications, and the later investigation of their response to the fire.

Laura Olhasso, the mayor of La Canada Flintridge, where dozens of homeowners saw damage to their property from debris flows resulting from the fire, said that despite assurances that the county's air policies have changed, she believes that the Forest Service could still see pilot and equipment shortages.

"Almost two years later I am dismayed by the pace of this inquiry and procedural changes that are being made," Olhasso said. "Your short term fire equipment problems are not really solved. They are better than they were but they are not solved.... if there are multiple fires as there were at beginning of the Station Fire, you are going to see the same problems."

Schiff, who has also been critical of the Forest Service, said that people at the meeting deserve answers to why the fire got so out of control.  He said that answers to those questions have taken an "unacceptably long time" to be answered.

"The Station Fire was a tragedy for many in this room and we still have questions about how it escaped its initial attack and became so large," Schiff said at the meeting.

Duncan Baird, a homeowner in the Big Tujunga Canyon area, where several dozen homes were lost, echoed the complaint of many that the Forest Service did not try to protect the area in the 48 hours after the blaze started on Thursday August 27, 2009.  The Big Tujunga Canyon residents lost their homes on Saturday.

"There was a period of time all day Thursday and all day Friday when some serious mitigation could have been done with an aerial assault to pre-treat fuels in our canyon," Baird said. "As it turned out there was absolutely zero work done in the canyon before the fire took our homes and everything we owned. "

Baird and others questioned whether the Forest Service calculated whether saving their property would be worth the cost of deploying additional fire resources. 

Harbour defended the agency's response as being an"aggressive, assertive initial attack."

He said cost factors are not considered when trying to put out a fire.

"We are not constrained by cost...we want to get the fire out.  There is, hopefully, no question about that," Harbour said.

Others at the meeting complained that the Forest Service has taken an extremely long time to restore public access to recreation areas.

"I retired here to hike in the Angeles National Forest and now by the time I am able to walk there I won’t even be alive," said Bruce Wright, a Pasadena resident.

Deputy Greg Gabriel of the Altadena Sheriff's Station, who is the station's representative on the Altadena Mountain Rescue Team, also said he has had trouble getting information on when roads in the National Forest, which help the group make rescues, will be open.

The local Angeles National Forest supervisor Marty Dumpis, said that some areas will likely be opened to the public around Memorial Day.  The open areas will include a total of about 98,000 acres of the forest, over half the burn area, he said. 

Dumpis added that would likely include some local front range areas that have been closed in the Millard Canyon and JPL area, but did not have exact details about which areas will be opened.

The GAO report, which will be completed some time near the end of 2011, will focus on how well the Forest Service followed its procedures for fighting fires and what changes might be advisable for future fires, according to Gaty.

He said that while the GAO will calculate the cost of fighting the fire, there wont be a cost benefit analysis on whether it would be advisable to increase funding for Forest Service aviation operations or not.

Local community leaders at the meetings said they believe residents are getting tired of not seeing their questions answered.

"When you go to so many of these meetings  you see the same people and they are here because they lost their homes, and we hear the same answers addressing the same concerns again and again," said Sandra Thomas, of the Altadena Town Council.  "I feel like some of these responses are generalizations that are not answering the questions that people have."


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