Blunders by a fire management team, headed by a Utahn, led to a dangerous entrapment that injured six firefighters last summer, a scorching report by the U.S. Department of the Interior says.
The six were overrun by what the report describes as a swift river of fire. The lapses resulted in the federal government's disbanding the elite interagency fire management team.The crew members were trapped by flames Aug. 9 while firefighters from throughout the West were battling the "Sadler Complex" blaze in the vicinity of Carlin, Nev. Firefighters or managers compromised all 10 "standard firefighting orders," says the report, titled "Sadler Fire Entrapment Investigation."
Officers of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued a citation against the Bureau of Land Management.
Management of the fire had fallen to the "Ed Storey Type I Incident Management Team." Storey is an administrator with the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands.
"Type I" refers to the most-qualified category of interagency teams organized to fight wildfires. The group Storey commanded was one of 18 such elite teams in the country.
Sheldon Wimmer, a BLM official in Salt Lake City who helped decide what should happen after the investigation, said the matter was so serious that the Ed Storey team was disbanded.
Storey refused to comment on the incident. "I think it's been overplayed and too much has been said already," he said Monday. "I wouldn't care to comment on it."
"Ed had worked on fire for many years," Wimmer said. "He's a heck of a good guy and a good firefighter."
The blaze grew with terrifying speed. According to Wimmer, a Type II team originally managed the blaze. That team was headed by Paul Hefner of the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise.
The blaze became too dangerous for the Type II management team, and Storey's Type I team assumed direction on the morning of Aug. 9. By that afternoon the fire had grown to 170,000 acres.
Bret Hart of the BLM's Richfield fire center was part of Hefner's Type II team that first tried to control the fire, but he and other members regrouped in Elko, Nev., when Storey's team took over.
The Sadler fire extended for about 20 miles, according to Hart.
"All summer in Nevada, the fires were crazy," he said. A "real heavy buildup of light fuel" made the rangeland volatile.
"On Friday (Aug. 6), what our team had done (was) we pulled everybody back," he said. High winds whipped the flames, sending them roaring across the sagebrush desert.
"It was really dangerous," he said. "We fell back and regrouped on Friday. That's when the Sadler blew up and really ran."
The fire was a frightening sight, according to Hart.
"You'd look up and it'd seem like an atomic bomb was going off." A huge plume of smoke was ascending, he said.
"A fire of that magnitude every four or five minutes is releasing the energy that was generated by the atomic bomb on Hiroshima."
The report says local ranchers and elected officials exerted "considerable pressure" to do more to limit the acreage burned, and "this was a contributing factor to the strong sense of urgency on the line the day of the entrapment."
Meanwhile, the National Park Service had assembled a Type II hand crew based at Golden Gate National Recreation Area, San Francisco.
Two "hotshot" crews were asked to create a backfire, supported by the less-experienced Golden Gate team. A backfire burns up fuel before a main fire arrives, starving the fire when it gets there. The hotshots declined the assignment, saying another line south of the safety zone should be secured before any backfiring.
"Backfiring the head of a 170,000-acre fire in the afternoon during red-flag warning and extreme fire behavior conditions was a hazardous tactic," the report adds.
"A squad from a moderately experienced Type II crew supported by one engine was a poor choice of forces for that action." However, the Golden Gate crew was sent to light backfires close to a line cleared by bulldozers. Suddenly, a fast-moving "river of fire" swept out of the hills toward the squad.
The backfire was "too aggressive a tactic for the existing conditions," says the report. While six crew members were lighting it, lookouts were not posted, the safety zones were too far apart and the line behind the squad was unsecured.
Wimmer told the Deseret News, "They went over and burned off an unsecured line." When the wind shifted, the blaze caught the firefighters, he said.
Fire spreading from the main blaze to the squad's location "was predictable given forecasted weather and fire behavior," the report says. However, the weather forecast and fire behavior forecasts "were not given adequate consideration."
During the blaze, one supervisor "tried to contact the crew members several times on the radio to warn them, but there was no response," the report says.
A "fire whirl" developed and jumped across the line that had been scraped by the bulldozer. A fire whirl is like a tornado of fire, a spinning vortex of hot air and gases rising from the fire.
Fifteen of the 21-member Golden Gate crew were waiting in a safety zone while the six others were in peril from the fire.
As the six ran toward a safety area, "a wall of flame forced them to the right side of the line and smoke obscured their vision, cutting each person off from the others for a time."
Crew member Karen Christensen tried to get into a special fire shelter she carried. "Before she got all the way into the shelter, the wind shifted, clearing the smoke enough for her to see (fellow crew member David) Deaton and move to the safety zone with them."
Christensen and Peter Giampaoli were treated in the Elko hospital for second-degree burns and smoke inhalation. The other four were treated for smoke inhalation.
"The IMT (Storey's incident management team) failed to watch out for the safety of the firefighters on the line and did not work under the premise that safety is the highest priority," says the report.
While fighting the fire, Storey was working for a BLM official in Nevada, Wimmer said. The OSHA citation is against the BLM. Bill Wright, an OSHA spokesman in Washington, D.C., said that because the citation was against another federal agency, no fine can be collected.
Wimmer said that when the investigation began in August, the Ed Storey Incident Management Team was ordered to stand down "because we'd heard stories about issues and problems" in the fire. Later, officials disbanded the team, he said.