INFORMATIONAL BULLETS ADDED BY NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, FIRE MANAGEMENT PROGRAM CENTER STAFF, BOISE, IDAHO 5/26/00
TRANSCRIPT BEGINS:Bruce Babbitt (Interior Secretary): ...begin by acknowledging the work that the investigation team has done over the last seven days. The document, which will be released and discussed this afternoon, is a thorough, detailed, critical, thoughtful investigation of these events. And I think it's quite a remarkable feat for this team of inter-agency managers and fire specialists brought together one week ago to have done the work, the interviews, the on-the-ground investigations that results in this report.
The investigation--the composition of the investigation team mirrors the way we do fire on public lands and that is on a cooperative inter-related inter-agency basis. The leader of the team Tom Lonnie is the Deputy of the Bureau of Land Management in the state of Montana; Joe Stutler, whom, you will be hearing from, from Redmond, Oregon, is an operations and fire specialist with the Forest Service; Dick Bahr is from the National Park Service from the inter-agency fire center in Boise.
A word about procedure. We had originally thought to do an abbreviated oral presentation of the results. I had a look at the visual presentation this morning and changed the agenda, because I think it's important that everyone have a chance to see the entire visual discussion so that we can get a texture and a sense of the complexities of this fire and an unflinching appraisal of the mistakes that were made.
Now the report details many failings. It is unsparing in its analysis of multiple failures throughout the entire process of this prescribed burn, beginning with the preparation of the prescribed-burn plan itself. Now inevitably I think there will be an attempt to pinpoint which failing caused this disaster to simplify and say: Here's the point at which this disaster set in and all the other causes are perhaps extraneous or less important.
The report doesn’t take that line for two reasons. One, I think you're going to see that the causal chain of this fires is quite complex. I would liken it to what happens on a mountainside when a rock is dislodged, starts rolling down a hill and pretty soon there are more rocks clattering down the hillside, and then pretty soon there's a whole rain of rocks and pretty soon there's a landslide by the time it gets to the bottom. And sometimes a rock is dislodged and nothing happens, but other times a rock is dislodged and it starts a cascading series of events which might have been slowed or stopped by different kinds of--of decisions but which in the end when you have the landslide at the bottom, in this case a disaster that overwhelmed Los Alamos, there will be a complex chain of causation.
Secondly, and--and the fire team makes this point emphatically, even those failings that were not outcome, determined that it didn't cause the fire, are in our judgement very important. Because if they didn't cause this one, if reported in the future, they may be in the chain of causation of another disaster and, of course, we are all determined that the lessons must be learned from this, both those who are directly causative and those which represent failures along the entire process.
Let me begin very briefly. The mistakes began with the preparation of the prescribed-fire plan. The calculations that went into the finding of complexity were seriously flawed. Now, the importance of that is that it resulted in a prescription with a lower classification of complexity, and that meant there were fewer resources and technical support and skills and analysis devoted at the ca--to this fire. Had those calculations been properly done, there would have been a larger background of personnel and support and review. So, in a sense, with the preparation of the prescribed-fire plan and with those mistakes imbedded in it, the process began with the agency and the participants behind the curve in ways that will be explained as this discussion is moved out with the video.
A second point that I would make of just a few brief comments is that it's clear that there were large mistakes of agency oversight. The issue here is the degree to which the preparations and analysis are being reviewed and signed off at a higher level. There's a tendency in all decision-making trees that the higher up you go the more tendency there is for busy supervisory personnel with many other responsibilities simply to rubber stamp decisions that are basically made by the technical people at the field level. That's an unacceptable paradigm to--it's an unacceptable model for the use of fire, because fire is the most dangerous and unpredictable force that we deal with. And that particular issue will be spotlighted again and again through the analysis of the professionals.
The report makes it clear that the Park Service failed on a large scale to bring in other agencies. Now, this fire was conceived and put on the ground as sort of within--within our bailiwick, or within the park deal. But the problem is, that it's a small park and it is surrounded by a national forest. It is surrounded by Indian reservations, by the community of Los Alamos, by many other land managers. And the failure to make this, from the outset, a clear inter-related, inter-agency effort across the landscape had many, many consequences which will be detailed in the analysis of the fire.
Lastly, let me briefly address--there are going to be many other questions. The most important question on my mind was presented to me about an hour ago by two mayors, two local officials. One was the mayor of Los Alamos, the other the mayor of Santa Fe. And their question was: What are communities in New Mexico, the Southwest, and indeed, all over the national forest and western landscape going to hear about initiatives to provide safety for their communities, to manage forests on this wildland, urban interface so that the experience of Los Alamos is not repeated? It is a very important question.
And as I speak today, the leadership of the Forest Service and the other land management agencies are engaged in discussions with the United States Congress to see if we can--as the most urgent pro-active item of all--put up for implementation--a fire safety and fireproofing program on the urban, wildland interface for communities like Los Alamos, Santa Fe and others. You may ask: How is this done? Well, fortunately, there is a citywide demonstration model now underway just to the west in Flagstaff, Arizona, under the leadership of the Forest Service with Professor Wallace Covington at Northern Arizona University with communities, agencies; everybody bonded in.
The model, that I think is going to provide the basis for this initiative, simply says we have a special obligation in our management of forests to deal with these safety issues, to avoid the possibility even of another Los Alamos.
The problem is this: the forests are explosive. They are too thick, they are too cluttered with young growth pines. They are reflecting the legacy of a long history of fire suppression in forests, which are co-evolved with fire.
The Flagstaff model covers about a hundred thousand acres and it is a combination of thinning, of getting into the forests and thinning out the trees and then applying prescribed fire. Not into an explosive force, but into a properly thinned forest to maintain the health, the freshness and vitality of the growth to keep from repeating these forests that are just choked with full wait--full of fuel waiting to explode.
We will be discussing that initiative with the New Mexico delegation. I have said on behalf of the Forest Service to the mayor of Santa Fe that the watershed in this community in which we are meeting today is certainly at the very top of the list for this approach to fireproofing through the pro-active use of thinning and the application of prescribed fire.
With that, I would like to get into the power point presentation. It's going to take some time, and I hope that we're not imposing on you to go through the entire presentation. I think it's very much worth your time and I assure you that after that we will have an opportunity for the governor to comment, for Congressman Udall to take questions for as long as you want to hang around.
And once the press conference is over, we'll be hanging around and anybody who wants to stay here, we'll all be here to answer questions until the sun sets over the Jemez Mountains and we can all go about something else.
Tom. (Graphic: Santa Fe, New Mexico, Sweeney Convention Center)
Tom Lonnie (Deputy State Director For Resources, Bureau of Land Management): Thank you, Mr. Secretary. My name's Tom Lonnie, I'm the deputy state director for resources with the Bureau of Land Management in Billings, Montana. We'd like to run you through a power point presentation associated with the Cerro Grande-prescribed fire.
The investigation team was chartered on May 12 to myself, Tom Thompson, deputy regional forester, Rocky Mountain region, Denver, Colorado, U.S. Forest Service; James Loach, associate regional director, National Park Service, Omaha, Nebraska; Tony Delfin, resource development bureau chief, State of New Mexico Forestry Division, Santa Fe; Tyler Przybylek, Department of Energy, chief of staff, Albuquerque, New Mexico.
There also were over thirty other specialists and managers associated with this team from a number of different agencies and they're all listed in the report. As I said, the investigation was based on a unified command structure and the five principal agencies involved and their members have all signed the document.
Team charter. The team charter was based on the delegation from the National Park Service director. It was based on planning. Was the prescribed-fire plan adequate? Implementation. Were prescription actions and procedures in the plan followed? Qualifications. Was the training and experience of the personnel involved commensurate with the agency qualification standards? In addition, the team was asked to establish any recommendations based on the findings to prevent this from occurring again--if possible, based on the results.
Basic chronology. On May 4, at 8 PM, the prescribed fire was ignited. On May 5, it was converted to a wildland fire. On May 7, the fire makes a major run, resulting in activation of a type-one incident management team. At this point, what we would like to do is to have Joe Stutler, with the forest service, and Dick Bahr, National Park Service, take us through what happened based on the events of that time period.
Joe Stutler (Operations and Fire Specialist, Forest Service): Thanks, Tom. (Graphic: Map of burnt area)
What you see in front of you is a map of the prescribed burn. You see the area--if you look at the top of the--where you see number one, on May 4 in the evening about 7:30 there was a test fire based on the prescription. The thing seemed to be going fine, the decision was made to continue with the firing. Going from number one to number two, the firing sequence was down the hill, laying fire along the--the top of the ridge, and either with--with water or with tools or with swatters, limbs to beat the fire out and let it back down the hill. That continued on and it proceeded on from position number two to position number three, but along the way they decided that the fire wasn't progressing as they--they would like in some areas, so they made the decision not to stop the fire, which would be on the upper right hand, the northeast side. Dick can point that out. And they continued on down towards, as you can see, where position number three is. I think that--from the standpoint of implementation, that might have been where things started going wrong.
Dick, you want to go from--
Dick Bahr (National Park Service Fuels Specialist): Once they reached point number three, the burn boss had walked back up to the test fire and had discovered that a small fire had started to burn outside of the fire area. He requested resources to leave three and hike back up to one and join him to take action on what was called a slop-over. That slop-over was about thirty-by-thirty feet, but he did need people up there to make that happen. They left two people down here at three to monitor that fire and watch this line over here to see what fire activity was left.
Once they had successfully taken care of that slop-over up there and the fire was back inside the control line that they had determined, they began ignition down the northwest side of the fire. Everything continued fine all the way down into the saddle down here. At that point, as is standard fire practice, they had a nob further out. As they went out here and tried to bring fire back into here so that they wouldn't have an uphill run with the potential for the fire to gain intensity and escape the fire area. Unfortunately, circumstances were--the vegetation community and the moisture had gotten so wet that they were having a hard time burning there. They spent over an hour and a half working this short distance here trying to get fire tied in so that their line would be secure. Once that happened, they ceased firing and went into a holding operation.
The decision was made, due to the time of day and the resource commitment, that they would have to send folks down off the mountain from both sides to get some sleep. They were going to leave a minimal staff up on the mountain to monitor the entire line all the way around the fire.
At that time, there were two people assigned on the northeast line watching this fire work over here, keeping it within the confined area, and they left four people over on this side to watch the fire on that side.
Stutler: What's not clear with this--if you take a look at where it says appropriate burned area, there would be a--a belief or conception that that was totally burned. Well, that's not true. As the fire backed down from the northeast side, it didn't do very well on the northwest side, but as it came on down and the decision to not stop the fire as I talked about earlier, resulted in a slop-over. That's essentially fire over the line along the eastern flank.
The people executing the burn were over-committed. They had more fire than they had resources to do with. The secretary talked about the rock at the top of the hill, this wasn't the first one, but it was certainly another pretty critical one in terms of how this all plays out. This--they had ordered additional resources. The resources come. They get there ten-thirty, eleven, eleven-thirty in the morning. It was Hot Shot crew--the Santa Fe Hot Shots on a helicopter. They began immediately working on the slop-over that you see on your screen.
For a variety of reasons and mainly because of the resources and some issues with funding, the decision was made at that point to stop being a prescribed fire and start being a wildfire--wildland fire. Again, this would come back to--you'll see how this plays out as we progress.
Dick.
Bahr: During that whole sequence what happened was additional people came on line, as Joe brought up. What we had was four people initially were taking action. They weren't keeping up. They requested additional help. When help started arriving, they started at the bottom end of the fire, and they were successful. But in order to be successful, they requested air tankers to make retardant drops, and in that process, a spot fire was picked up right down here by the boundary.
They were also successful at dispatching enough resources in terms of hand crew down to take care of that spot fire also. So now the decision is made--this is a wildland fire. Our focus is, we've got to figure out how to put this thing out and contain it within a specified area. We're still keeping up with it, but we're behind as far as the number of resources. So the thought process has now changed and we've got to continue on in the sequence.
Stutler: The next phase is put together a plan on how to manage this as a wildland fire. They put together an analysis document called a Wildfire Situation Analysis that took--that addresses alternatives to safely and successfully suppress the fire. And if you will, what they tried to do was put the--put the fire in a box. They were going to either use existing or construct fire line down the east and west flanks, and basically the road was the plan for the bottom. It--generally--another--one alternative they discussed was to--from about that position across was to build a fire line across there based on previous experience. It would be necessary to understand that where the fire is uphill. So if you're going to build a fire line underneath it, you have what's called underslung line, which means that it's--it's high maintenance. You have stuff rolling all the time. Because of snags and underslung lines, the decision was--which was alternative A in the analysis--the decision was made not to do that, to come down and--and have a more of an indirect type of a tactic to address the fire.
Dick.
Bahr: It's important here to recognize that these lines had been put in prior to the execution of the prescribed fire, as outlined in the plan. The intent was, ultimately, when they got ready to do phase two, that they would put a hose lay up here to help support the firing operations and the holding activity that would go on with that. So, what we have is a line where a chainsaw has been used to cut out the heavy wooden materials, to open it up wide enough, and a hand line has been constructed whereby firefighters have gone in, using hand tools, and removed the surface material to get it down to bare mineral soil, where fire will not cross through the vegetation.
Contrastly, on the west side of the fire, the saw line has been put in, but they never completed installing the hand line. That had to be done as part of this wildland fire--situation, as we start to make the appropriate response, is we've got to dig that line in so that we have something to work from. As part of the WFSA, the situation is the plan was, because of the predominate winds, is that we would then burn along this line, thereby removing the fuels to slow the fire, and slowly let the fire work off the hill, because we had a predominant wind coming this way, while we took the time to construct this line. Once we had fire all the way down to here, the intent was to bring fire along here and thereby secure that line so that fire would not fall over and slide down into Frijoles Canyon, which ultimately, has the ability to go all the way down the park and on out the bottom.
As part of the WFSA, though, the definition was when they got to this point here, they were to cut straight across. And this is a standard fire practice, so that you don't have what we consider to be a dog leg in here where unburned fuels are situated between two fired areas. Somewhere in the process, this didn't get executed. We don't know where that communication broke down, but it was, again, another one of the stones that caused the problem.
Stutler: Sunday morning we had some--you'll see the direction of the wind. We'll address this in the--the findings some, but the--the wind direction and the speed and intensity was not forecast. We'll get into that a little later, but that's another rock and this thing is starting to move. Dick is talking about the--the burning out that occurred, instead of cutting across, came down. The wind event took that fire, and--and, if you can see the map, the contour lines are, you can see, are fairly steep above that, but where the--the arrow is and the wind, there's hardly any contour lines. It's essentially flat. What's unique here is that had they cut the fire off above the dog leg, they could have avoided a flat which had probably the most hazardous fuels in the entire unit.
Additionally, you see the way the wind was blowing? Dick pointed out Frijoles Canyon. In this profession of wildland fire management, there's a condition called alignment. You have the hottest part of the unit. You have a canyon coming from south to north and prevailing wind, and because of the tactic--the--the suppression tactic starting along the road, bringing it there with the wind, the fuels, now we're rolling. And again, remember, that we have been behind from the very beginning in terms of resources on the fire, and the people on that fire do not know about the wind event. They do not have the information.
Bahr: The part that happens here in Frijoles Canyon becomes real important. Once these spot fires become initiated, the intensity is so great that the hand crews cannot take action. What they have to do is delay action going into Frahildie's Canyon, but they are, in fact, ultimately successful in putting a line in and cutting these spot fires off. What they hadn't recognized was again, more ski--a bigger chain of events had occurred and in fact, multiple spot fires had occurred from this event down here with another spot fire further up the ridge, producing another one further up the ridge, getting it to the top of the ridge whereby it was all down hill out into a different fuels complex where, by late afternoon, we had multiple spot fires that were rapidly increasing intensity, that, given the alignment had a nearly immediate potential to threaten the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The-- (Graphic: Map showing New Mexico fire area)
Stutler: Can you take that back for a second, Dick, please?
Bahr? Yes.
Stutler: The--I would again in one of the earlier pictures of the map one would naturally, or perhaps, draw the conclusion that all that above that was burned and that is incorrect. If you were from a distance it would be very difficult in some places. You'd see a few brown trees from the scorching. Because of this alignment, because of the unforecast of wind, because of the lack of resources that started all the way to the beginning, the spots won out.
The pictures that we have seen, the visits to the ground, this line of spot fires escaping, it's essentially almost a scale. Everything on the other side of it is essentially green. It's hard to detect that it actually burned very much at all. But when it went out there's this long streak of fire, a wind-driven fire. And please remember that because we'll talk about it a little later. It's a wind-driven fire at this point. Again, keep thinking about the series of events that gets us to this spot.
Bahr: We're now in to the point where things are definitely starting to escalate, but we've got to step back a little bit. When these spot fires occurred down here, it triggered a decision by the National Park Service management at Bandelier which was produced when it first slopped over and it was converted to a wildland fire and that was the decision, should it get in Frijoles Canyon, we are going to order a type-one incident management team because of the complexity and the experience of two wildland fires that occurred in Bandelier years previously. They knew that they were over their head and they had nothing they could do. But now they had to hold on to the race until that incident management team could come in place and we could begin to expand the organization to make that happen.
During this sequence of events, as soon as we started getting these spot fires out here, the entire focus was on public safety and the firefighters and the visitors' safety that resulted around there. We knew that we had people in a trailer park down this road out here. We knew that we had traffic on this road that could interfere with firefighting operations. And this road continues on over, ultimately tying into State Route 501 that goes to Los Alamos and we've got traffic there. So now we've just increased the complexity; we've just increased the area under which they're going to have to operate under. (Graphic: Map of area)
What we want to do now is addressed (sic) the major findings. And I think the key point here is--with these initial findings is--we are addressing federal personnel that we have either interviewed, received factual documents from or have obtained notes where we can have factual accounts. And we are going to rely on the facts for what we have found in the major findings.
First of all, federal personnel failed to properly plan and implement the prescribed fire. With the initial error that occurred in evaluating the complexity of the situation that they were planning for, the person who was tasked to write the plan had never experienced anything of this magnitude or this complexity. In addition, once that plan was written, we failed to follow the plan. There was a sequence of events that we were to conduct this prescribed fire under. That did not occur.
This part of the--of the planning process required to go through a complexity analysis process that shows the planner and the agency what you're about to deal with and what resources that you would--would be needed to do that. We have found that the complexity analysis that was used for this was flawed. Again, going back to the very beginning, we had--you'll see some of this further on in terms of training and some of that. But the planning and the complexity--there's another part of it, even after you go through the--the--the planning, looking at fuels, looking at boundaries, going through the complexity analysis, there's a--an additional checklist that you use right before you ignite. It's called--it's called a Go/No/Go checklist. And we found that that also was not used as it should.
Bahr: As part of that complexity analysis process, the planner has to identify twelve key elements that relate to what has been determined the success of prescribed-fire operation. And also those apply to wildland fire operations. They relate to public safety, firefighter safety, the complexity of the operation in terms of getting resources to and from the fire, the size of the operation, the magnitude in terms of how many people do we have to involve in this organization with a number of other factors. And those are all identified in the report as to where those short-comings were.
In addition, we failed to provide substantive review of the prescribed-fire plan before it was approved. What happened here is there was nobody looking over it from an objective eye that didn't have direct involvement in it. They didn't adequately analyze all of the factors that were going to ultimately become involved to make this thing happen. Were resources going to be there? How long were they going to take? What happens if it goes outside of the burn unit?
Stutler: The next one has to do with the issue of contingency resources to successfully suppress the fire. Again, think of this as in stages. The planning, the complexity, the last-minute checklist, the fact that there wasn't substantive oversight guidance and support prior to implementing got us into the notion of not identifying contingency resources necessary to suppress the fire.
Bahr: In addition, federal personnel failed to evaluate the conditions adjacent to the fire boundary with regard to fire behavior, fuel conditions and public safety in the event that the fire crossed the planning boundaries. Its policy for the Federal Wildland Fire Agency is to use the best available science. We can assess the fuel's conditions. We can go out there and sample them to know what their moisture content is. We have tools to assess long-term risk in terms of how fast will the fire get someplace or what is the expected duration of the burn. Those were not applied.
Stutler: The other--another major finding is that the weather forecasts given to the people on the fire--prescribed fire, the wildland fire, failed to predict the three- to five-day forecast for the period of May 7 through 9. Remember that May 7 was the day that the wind was going to happen. A forecast was issued from the National Weather Service to the National Park Service, but the piece about the wind was missing. It wasn't that it wasn't forecast, it was missing. It was not included. So the people on the fire with inadequate resources did not know that this wind was coming.
Bahr: Federal personnel failed to follow safety policies for firefighters and the public. Because of the lack of planning and having inadequate resources established to do the firing operations and to handle this prescribed fire, we ended up with fire line personnel being on duty from twenty-four to upwards over forty-eight hours with no sleep. And the concern there becomes, how well are you thinking? How well are you responding? What kind of decisions are you making? In addition, there was some public issues that were not addressed relating to keeping people notified as they were involved with activities along the road or in the area.
Stutler: We have--if you recall the charter, we had another--of looking at the qualifications of the people. Within the United States, there's a group called the National Wildfire Coordinating Group that essentially sets the standards, minimum standards, for people who do both prescribed and wildland fire met those minimum standards from an academic perspective.
Bahr: The concern came in when we started dealing and looking at the technical and operational experience of the burn boss was not adequate. And this really was a trickle down from the initial complexity in terms of the fire was underrated. Had the fire been of the complexity that was defined, we probably would have been OK. But the situation here was this burn boss had not seen a fire of this size in the capacity of burn boss, nor in the complexity, given the past experience that he'd been assigned as a burn boss.
Stutler: Just a point on that one. When we--when we took a look at the--the experience, previous experience, and the--the burn boss had lots of experience. When you take a look at complexity and size of what the burn boss had managed, it--it included a couple of crews and essentially a small amount of resources. And it was ironic that his experience in--in terms of resources was about what was planned for this fire; that he probably was doing what--up to his capability, even though academically he had the paper.
Lonnie: Thank you. At this time, I'd like to go over the team's conclusions.
We concluded that the prescribed fire was based upon a flawed plan and required fire management policies were not followed.
Stutler: Next one.
Lonnie: The National Park Service was never warned by the National Weather Service not to burn. All fire weather protocol was followed.
Stutler: I would--we spent a--a considerable amount of time. The way the process works is you plan a prescribed fire; people on the prescribed fire--on the fire ground take weather readings. The weather readings go to the National Weather Service. The National Weather Service makes a forecast. It comes back to the fire ground, to the decision-maker. The decision-makers look at the forecast, check it against the prescription; they make the decision. In all of our looking, we found no evidence that that process was not followed. We found no evidence that anyone from the weather service said: Don't do this. There's been information about the Haines Index. I'll ask Dick to hopefully explain it to w--in a way that--that you will understand the issue here.
Bahr: To really understand the Haines Index and why it was not a factor, even though it was forecast to be a Haines of six, which is large as the scale can get, we have to start back a little bit further. And first of all, we have to understand the fire environment. And when we talk about that, we have to talk about what is the slope that the fire is sitting on; how much fuel is on the ground that can be burned or consumed at any one time. What is the fuel moisture of that fuel? Is it very dry? Or is it wet? Is it going to result in a flashy, hot fire or is it going to be a slow, smoldering fire? What we're looking at is how much heat can we generate in the very rapid time frame. And, in addition, we have to look at a couple of environmental factors dealing with wind, temperature and relative humidity, because those have the greatest influence on the fuels environment in a very short duration.
When we look at the Haines Index, what we're doing is we're looking at two factors or two parameters. They are atmospheric instability, which is, in essence, can the atmosphere go up and down? Or how much disturbance is it going to take for that atmosphere to become unstable and start to create some pattern at which it will become basically a vertical motion. In addition, you have to look at the amount of moisture up there. And I guess the best analogy we can put it into that most people understand is: Could a thunderstorm still develop if we had enough heat underneath it that would allow particle development? So what we end up with in the Haines Index is: the Haines Index is looking at the vertical development of the column and whether that can be sustained. Because as we know in thunder storms, what goes up has to, ultimately, come back down again.
So what we play with in the fire game is the balance of the vertical instability versus the wind factor. The wind wants to push it horizontally across the landscape but the heating wants to vertically. And it's a question of which one's going to win. So what we have is a Haines Index that's to look at this vertical instability versus a wind factor that drives it horizontally across the countryside. And in this scenario, the wind won in every spit (sic) of it. The forecast called for winds that would overpower and be the dominant force in this environment. We didn't have enough fuel. We didn't have the moisture conditions to where the Haines Index would even be a consideration.
In addition, we have to recognize that the Haines is only valid during the sounding times under which those atmospheric instability conditions are made. And it really is only influential when you have that kind of heating in the environment. So what we ended up with was wind being the big factor.
Lonnie: Our next conclusion: Agencies must follow all practices set forth in the Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy in program review if we expect to continue using fire as a critically important management tool.
Stutler: The Federal Wildland Policy and program review was signed by both Secretaries in the middle of December in 1995. Something that the Secretary said a little earlier, this was not a Park Service and not a weather service issue. It's the agencies. And if we're going to continue to use fire as a management tool to get--accomplish both natural resource objectives and to provide firefighter and public safety, it simply has to be there. However, if agencies aren't following that it's absolutely essential for us to be able to do the things I just mentioned.
Lonnie: Our next conclusion: This incident critically demonstrates the need to continue to provide for a firefighter and public safety and must be given the highest management considerations when managing wildland fire as outlined in the Federal Wildland Fire Policy.
Stutler: You're going to hear the Federal Wildland Policy a couple more times. Of--and what I would tell you is that the policy is sound. The federal fire policy came after the '94 fire season. And the premise was cooperation and firefighter and public safety. If we're going to continue this, firefighter and public safety has to be given the absolute highest management consideration. When you're managing wildland fires, failure is not an option.
Lonnie: Our next conclusion: All agencies must insure that all administrators are actively involved and committed to fire management activities.
Bahr: We're going to have to engage our agency administrators in this process. They can't rubber stamp it. They got to know what's going on. They got to know what the impacts are. And we see that, not just in this situation but in all others, is you've got to be involved. And it's everybody that's involved, it's not just the unit that's burning, it's the surrounding cooperators or those people who could potentially be impacted are going to have to be there too.
Lonnie: Next conclusion: Agency administrators must set the example and establish that wildland and prescribed-fire management are critical and of the highest importance.
Stutler: We talk about an agency administrator we're talking someone with essentially line authority for that unit. Dick made the mention of rubber stamping. There are other priorities. There's nothing that has more potential to either--you know, to damage in a catastrophical fashion the natural resources or the landscape of ecosystem or the public and their property in wildland fire.
Lonnie: This is our final conclusion from the investigation, the Federal Wildland Fire Policy was adapted on December 18, 1995 and federal agen--ag--agencies have not fully implemented the policy along inter-agency lines.
Stutler: We looked at--we used the policy as our framework in terms of meeting our objectives. Now what we've--we've found is that even though the policy is sound, the federal agencies jointly have not put together manuals, procedures, guidelines, that result in this versus this. We had some issues that you will read in your report about contingency resources. We have some issues about complexity analysis. We have some issues about how we coordinate. We have a great document to build from and it--it's--it's more than just the federal agencies. It makes little sense for all the federal agencies to have one document and other jurisdictions; states, counties, municipalities, other landmad--land management agencies to have something that doesn't come together. As you can see from this fire it doesn't know those boundaries.
Bahr: Along those lines what we found is this partial implementation of the policy has brought about some real concerns. We don't look at fire and wildland fire as being one tool. We still have the concept over here of suppression is appropriate, prescribed fire is a different area that hasn't gained full acceptance but it's increasing. And what we have is a separation of resources and a mind-set where the commitment of when I have a fire, I should be able to bring in all of those resources and that had a big influence on what this ultimate outcome was. Everybody's got to talk the same language with the same perimeters listed.
Lonnie: Thank you Dick and Joe.
Once again, I'd like to thank the team that was involved in the investigation process. It was a unified approach and I thank you for your attention. And thank you, Mr. Secretary.
Babbitt: Tom, thank you. I'm now going to call upon Congressman Udall first and then Governor Johnson and ask them to make some brief comments. We will then proceed straight to the question and answer. Tom.
Representative Tom Udall (Democrat, New Mexico): Secretary Babbitt, thank you very much for coming here and bringing the team with you and letting our communities in New Mexico know what happened and know what happened so quickly. This has only been six days since you were last here and we now have a report that--that all of us, I think, are going to digest and be talking about for a long time.
But the critical--the critical thing that comes out of here I think for Los Alamos and the Santa Clara Pueblo (sic) and the other New Mexico--Rio Arriba County, the--the communities surrounding where this fire was--the critical issue that comes out of this is--is that the federal government and all these--an analogy that's been used--and all of the rocks that came down, that rolled down the hill, that created the disaster that we had and the catastrophe we had--every one of those rocks was a federal rock.
I mean, it was a federal action. It was a federal responsibility that--that--that caused all of this. And the federal government is res--accepting responsibility for what has happened. And I just want to talk briefly about what we're trying to do about that right now.
My plan--and we've been visiting with the--all of the delegation members--we had a delegation meeting several days ago--is to very quickly get in place a piece of federal legislation that will allow the individuals that were injured--uninsured businesses, uninsured individuals, losses that are out there--to apply with a claims process in a speedy claims process and get their claims compensated.
There is precedent for this at the federal level. In Wyoming, when the Teton Dam broke in 1976, the federal government moved in a matter of three months to put in place an operation to compensate individuals. Congress began work on a law. It was on the president's desk--the incident happened in June, the--the piece of legislation was on the president's desk in September. And in--within a matter of year--year--within a matter of a year, most of the individuals had been compensated. Much of them much more quickly than that if you get a speedy claims process in place.
There have been meetings in Washington, from Secretary Babbitt up, with the president's chief of staff, with the director of the OMB to discuss this issue. And--and my understanding is this administration is on a wavelength to accept a piece of legislation like this, to endorse it and to help it move through the legislative process.
Our delegation--our New Mexico delegation is committed to move forward with this compensation effort and to move forward as quickly as possible. The time lines that I gave you on the Teton Dam, I hope and pray that we can do it quicker here. That we can bring the king of help that--that--that people need.
I've been up in Los Alamos since the fire started and--and there are very, very many people up there in need. There are people without homes. There are small businesses that haven't operated for ten days. They have payrolls.
The--the Pueblos and Santa Clara and San Ildefonso have--have been devastated by this fire. All of northern New Mexico has helped fight the fire and they're tired, people in Rio Arriba County and the others surrounding Sandoval--and surrounding counties.
So, our effort is to try to--to move beyond this and to move beyond the acceptance of--of culpability here by the federal government and say let's try to put people in control of their lives again, let's let people put their lives back together again and let's try to make them whole.
And I'll be here and happy to answer questions later.
Oh, this is--well, Governor Johnson deserves--in the context of this catastrophe, does not need an introduction. He's been there very day on the line.
Governor Johnson.
Governor Gary Johnson (New Mexico): Well, something for everybody to keep in mind, nobody was seriously hurt.
Thank you, Secretary Babbitt.
I don't think it could be more clear; the government is responsible for what has happened here. With regard to the way that this situation was dealt with, the fire itself, the rep--the getting people back into Los Alamos, the emergency declaration, the disaster declaration. From A to Z, federal agencies have responded, the state has responded, the county's responded, local authorities have responded. As far as I'm concerned, this just could not have been done better responding to this terrible situation. You know, if this were a--if this would have been a lightening strike that caused this fire or if this would have been a tornado or if--or if this would have been a hurricane, the citizens, I think, of Los Alamos would be treating this a lot differently than the way they're treating it. If you or I got hit by an automobile and it was their fault, we would want to be compensated right now and we'd want to be made whole right now. Well, Los Alamos has been hit by an eighteen-wheeler and the government was driving that eighteen-wheeler, and they want to get compensated right now. So going forward, the emergency declaration that's in place, the disaster declaration that's in place, is going--is--are really stop gaps to get people through this terrible situation. This is going to get people through. But as--as clearly been stated, the government is responsible here. The congressional delegation is going to be working to get people fully compensated. So my advice to all New Mexicans is document, document, document your losses, whether you're an individual, whether you're a business. And, of course, the state figures in on this, the county figures in on this, local authorities, agencies figure in on this. Show documentation for your damages and then show patience. We're going to get through this. Don't hire an attorney. You can always hire an attorney. Give the government a chance here to make good on this, and I think that they will. I am very, very proud of the way New Mexico--New Mexico citizens have responded to this. I'm proud to be a New Mexican. I've never been more proud to be governor of the state of New Mexico. Thank you.
Babbitt: Thank you, Governor.
Just a couple of housekeeping items. There will be hard copies of the report on the tables at the back of the room at the end of this conference. The documents, as of--I believe about an hour from now, we'll have--be available, in--in--including the report on the Web site. It's www.nps.gov/cerrogrande, one word, C-E-R-R-O-G-R-A-N-D-E.
Unidentified Man: It's out right now.
Unidentified Man #2: It's already documented.
Babbitt: They're already out there. So if you don't want to listen to us anymore, you may make your way to your Web site.
Now due to the time and constraints of the press conference, I'd ask that we have questions only from the media. And you can accelerate the process by lining up in front of any of the four microphones that we have scattered throughout the room.
Right here.
Unidentified Man #3: Yes. Mr. Secretary, now that we've fixed responsibility for this fire, we've been hearing about precedents with the Grand Teton damage. And there was a 1957 Supreme Court case regarding the Tort Reform Act, which effectively equated the federal government to any private entity in terms of liability for its actions. Can not the president just issue an executive order to deal with this matter, accept responsibility and set up a claims process immediately without having to go through legislation and not requiring its citizens to bring lawsuit, which would only delay the process, add insult to injury and ultimately increase the cost of the taxpayers?
Babbitt: OK. Well, I agree with Governor Johnson's observation that we ought to have a process in which no one has to--has to file a lawsuit in order to get compensated.
Now, there are two ways--the intention of this administration to devise the promptest, most efficient, effective way to compensate the losses. There are two possible ways. One is the Federal Tort Claims Act. It's existing legislation that would be handled through the Justice Department. It's a possibility that the administration is looking at. There are some complexities and some obstacles that tend to drag out that process. That's the reason that the alternative of--of an incident-specific piece of legislation relating to this fire is now under discussion with the congressional delegation. It is our desire in this administration to select that option which will provide the fastest and most efficient result.
Yes.
Unidentified Woman #1: Mr. Secretary.
Babbitt: Let's go right here and then--I don't--I don't even know where you are, but whoever you were, you're next. Let's do--go right here.
Unidentified Man #4: Mr. Secretary, I'd like to address this to you and Governor Johnson. Because of the culpability of the federal government and its personnel in not adhering to the plan, it--from a policy level, is this the kind of incident that gives people fuel who are so outraged at federal government's intervention in state matters that--that they can hold this up and say: Here is--is exhibit A as to why the federal government should back off its involvement in national parks, national forests and leave more control and management to local officials and people who live in the area? I'd like to hear form both perspectives.
Babbitt: OK. Well, I'm going to defer that question until we've dealt with incident-related questions. I--I understand the question. I’m sure everybody in this room has an opinion as to the relative allocation of responsibilities between the state and federal government. It's an age-old question of federalism. It's been debated for two hundred years. I want to get to issues relating to this incident and the response to this incident. Let's see. We have one over here.
Woman #1: Yes, Mr. Secretary. Thank you for coming here today. The people of this northern state of New Mexico are very concerned about the contaminants in our air. We know that the lab has been dumping contaminants, radionuclides and all sorts of chemicals up there for fifty-seven years. We know that some of these areas have burned. We know the crayons are full of the contaminants. We would like an independent oversight team, community residents, that can watch over the investigation, watch over the cleanup. And we are also absolutely outraged there is no information coming from a top premier weapons laboratory on what is in out air and it's been almost two weeks. This is not acceptable.
Babbitt: You have all heard the secretary of energy discussing this issue. The secretary of energy is the--a former congressman from this district of New Mexico. He has said plainly and unequivocally that there has been no danger from hazardous and radioactive wastes on that facility put into play by this fire. I am not the secretary of energy and I must therefore refer your questions to Bill Richardson.
Yes.
Unidentified Man #5: Mr. Secretary, your team makes some rather damning statements against the National Weather Service. It doesn't appear that the National Weather Service is represented in any way on this team. What I'm wondering is--you make reference saying that they failed to provide any wind prediction in the three- to five-day forecast for the period of May 7 through May 9. And then you went on to say, the piece about the wind was missing. Does that mean--what, the--the page didn't come out of the fax machine? It got lost somewhere along the way or--or--and why did not someone, for a critical burn, go back and say: Hey, we need some wind information?
Babbitt: The--the team found as follows, that the three- to five-day forecast was not a part of the report that was received on the ground level. There is now question in the minds of the team that that should have prompted a request for that missing piece of information.
Bahr: I think we also made aware--there are two members to the National Weather Service. One is a Forest Service meteorologist and there is also a National Weather Service meteorologist that are part of the team as team as technical specialists that went to the National Weather Service office that was issuing the forecasts. We obtained all of the documents that they issued during that time period in addition to getting all of the documentation that was received by the dispatch center that was transmitting information to the fire.
And that was the finding--is that the wind component on that document was not there. And, in fact, you are correct in terms of we also have an obligation to read through that document, and if that is not a component, we have a mechanism in place to back to the n--weather service and get that filled in. And it was an oversight, and it's identified in the findings.
Unidentified Woman #2: My question is also wind-related. It was my understanding that you say wind was not a factor until May 7, and that was the three- to five-day forecast, where the wind piece was missing. What about the forecast prior to the seventh?
Babbitt: Dick?
Bahr: I guess what we want to say is winds were a factor the entire time. The one issue that we are trying to address is the Haines Index was not an issue. The winds at the time of ignition on May 4 were within the prescription parameters identified in the burn plan, and they remained that way through the duration of this incident being managed as a prescribed fire. What happened was the winds that were never forecast on May 7 resulted in this blowing with multiple spot fires and heading on out east from the prescribed fire unit.
Unidentified Man #6: Mr. Secretary, Governor, Congressman Udall, I have a question, and it's also in the form of recommendation. I think you should ask FEMA and the Public Health Service and the National Institute of Health to avail people living in this impact area, which goes five hundred miles east into Kansas, the Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma Panhandle, to be allowed to be tested for the presence of r--radio isotopes, meaning strontium, cesium, iodine, uranium, plutonium and others. This would help a--avert or perhaps even prepare the people in this area so that we don't have another Bopaul (sp) or another Chernobyl. And I--I truly hope the Forest Service has learned its lesson not to play with fire.
Unidentified Man #7: Mr. Secretary?
Babbitt: OK. Those issues are appropriate for the Department of Energy. They do not relate to the purpose of this particular--briefing, which relates to the cause and effects of this fire. Now--
Man #7: Mr. Secretary--
Babbitt: Now let me go over here and then take a couple more here. And then I think what we'll do is break down and terminate the large-scale conference, but be available for those who want to follow up with any of the team members who are here on the podium or the extended team members who are all sitting right here in the first row.
Yes?
Unidentified Man #8: Sir, did the report find that the forest service had ever advised the Park Service against burning in the Cerro Grande area?
Babbitt: OK. I think the answer is no, but let me hear from either J--Joe?
Stutler: What we found in the report or in--in the investigation was that the Park Service had made notifications to agencies, but what we found is that describing the complexity and what was all involved in the burn was not clearly identified and communicated to the cooperating agencies. We've had evidence of lots of agencies that have expressed concern after the fact, but no one expressed that concern at the d--at the decision-making level or the appropriate level to the National Park Service prior to the ignition. Now, there was casual conversation at times, but we have no evidence that anyone in any of the other agencies said: Stop, don't do it. This is not a good idea. And, in part, was that the complexity of the--the prescribed fire was not clearly communicated.
Babbitt: yeah, I think that's right. I--I--I don't think that another agency would be expected or would have reason to voice an opinion in the absence of having a look at all of the parameters that are in the burn plan, because an opinion on something like this is really a horseback opinion in the absence of knowledge of all of the variables, the terrain, the prescribed-fire plan itself.
Yeah?
Unidentified Man #9: Sir, if I could follow up with that.
Babbitt: Sure.
Man #9: Is there any evidence that there was a delay in the time that it took for the Forest Service to get the crew out there to the fire once it was requested by the Park Service?
Babbitt: That is covered in the plan, and in a nutshell, the answer is yes, there was a delay and it probably quite certainly was not in the direct chain of causation because the crew was deployed off to handle a spot fire which was not a direct piece of this. Do you guys want to add to that?
Bahr: It might also be noted that--it should also be noted that the dispatch system in the southwest area would not allow ordering of resources without the declaration of this becoming a wildfire. There was a negotiated effort whereby the dispatch center ordered resources for a fire to the north and then diverted those resources onto the prescribed fire. And that was, in fact, the contingency resources that arrived in the form of the type-three helicopter and the twenty-person hand crew.
Unidentified Man #10: Mr. Secretary?
Babbitt: OK. These--these issues that Joe just talked about I think are very, very important because they go back to the basic issue of underlying much of this about the nature of inter-agency coordination and understanding an engagement in the process. Yes.
Unidentified Man #11: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. You stated that--in your opening remarks--that the action on the part of the National Park Service resulted in failures, many failures you said. Did any of those failures--and you can possibly--the--your investigators might be able to answer--did any of those failures rise to the level negligence or rise to the level that could involve further investigation of a possible violation of the law?
Babbitt: The--the next step in this process will be to convene a board of inquiry. This is a standard procedure. The--the reason for that is to have a technical peer review by people who were not engaged in the investigation itself. That will take approximately one week. I've requested that report back by May 26. The four people involved are the Oregon state director of the BLM, the regional forester of--of the Forest Service in the Rocky Mountain region, the assistant director of the Florida State Division of Forestry and the forest manager from the White Mountain Apache Tribe. Now once that report is back, there will then be a reference to the agency, to the Park Service, for administrative--for consideration of administrative action based on the findings of the investigation and the peer review.
One thing I would like to ask either Joe or Dick or Tom about, there ha--has been a question: What was the precise source of the fire that moved across into Los Alamos? Now this is just a factual detail. It's not about anything other than this sort of cascading chain of events. Anybody want to--
Stutler: Dick's going to put the--hopefully recall the--the picture. There. Can I see the pointer, please? Dick would--identified when the fire became a--a wildland fire, recall we had some fire lines here, fire lines here, stopped about there. (Graphic: Map of the burn area) The plan was--was to burn along this road, cut it off because of this--what Dick referred to as a dog leg, but this is Forest Road Four I believe. But essentially cut it across here, somewhere about there. In the chain of events, it is not clear, but somehow a decision was made to introduce fire here and burn along here. You had this burn--and when the fire was introduced along here and got into this flat--again, I mentioned that this probably, based on the observations of our fire behavior people, this was probably the most hazardous areas in the bu-the burn unit in terms of flammability fuel. We talked about alignment again. This had sun on it, winds strongly from this direction, through a saddle and a drainage. When a fire was introduced here, instead of here, the ignition source was there. We had a forecast of wind that never made it to the ground, and when the wind hit, with inadequate resources already there, a fuel bed much drier over here in low elevation. That's when everything went. (Graphic: Map of burn area)
I--it's--it's amazing to see how narrow this is in the grand scheme of the overall unit, but looking at it closely, it--it's ironic that if the fire could have been kept in the prescribed mode and continued to back down, it may not have ever got to this or cutting this off, non-introducing. It's our belief and the fire behavior analyst's belief and the team, that the suppression action, introducing the fire, the wind event, drier fuels--drier fuels and lack of planning to have contingency resources. If you want to put your finger on one thing, that's probably it.
Babbitt: OK. That's--everybody got that? The--the immediate source of the fire that went over the Los Alamos was from the burnout activity, but that's not to--that of course, was caused by the fact that there was a prescribed fire out of control. So that's a distinction, but not meant to tear apart the chain of causation.
OK. Let's have one more here and then we'll break it up.
Unidentified Man #12: My understanding from talking to Nat--the National Weather Service is that they did not play the role saying: Don't burn. They told me that they provide the information to the experts on the scene, and then they make the decision. It sounded like you were saying something else. Or are you rec-recommending a change in that policy?
Babbitt: No. No. That's--that's a fair question. By consensus of everyone in the weather and the fire establishment, the role of the National Weather Service is not to give advice about fires of any kind. The role of the National Weather Service is to make predictions about weather from which fire management officials may then take action, make plans and translate into action on the ground.
OK. Thank you all very much.
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