One point I would like to make. The fire crews did not help us with preparing for the 2007 fire, they were told to stay off private land. They did wrap picnic tables down the road and some old buildings. They also did a lot of work along Johnson Creek road, but the power lines burned down anyway (several times.) We kept hearing about “point protection” and resource management. Our local volunteer fire department augmented with a strike team patrolled our village and put out the spot fires. (Not all of us were able to evacuate.)

Another point I would like to make is that some members of our volunteer fire department were ‘locked out’ by the road blocks, even tho we had been told our fire department was responsible for protecting the village. (not to mention that we didn’t have mail for 47 days, no power for nearly 2 months, no supplies were allowed in or medicine, etc..)

They LIED to us at the fire meetings all summer about how they could not get the the firefighting equipment they needed and about how this was a suppresion fire.

We have contacted an attorney who has filed legal actions against the Federal Government before and won. He thinks we can prosecute those responsible for implementing the Ten Year Fire Plan on the Payette Forest. It would take a lot of work in discovery and would be a five to ten year battle.

Would you be willing to help us in discovery if we can get this up and running?

Whoofoos Kill Old-Growth, here:

http://www.sosforests.com/?p=448

and Homeland, here:

http://www.sosforests.com/?p=449

Without initial attack, fires rapidly become bigger, and the bigger they become, the most dangerous, difficult, and expensive it becomes to contain them. No initial attack leads to megafires. Uncontained fires sometimes smolder in place, but sometimes they do not. The fires that grow do so in a chain reaction, self-reinforcing fashion, meaning they propagate and spread like a cancer across the body of the land.

The reduction in (elimination of) initial attack has taken place nation-wide, not just in Idaho. This disturbing report from SoCal appears (here) on the website of the Daily Bulletin of Ontario, CA:

Happy talk won’t put out fires

OUR VIEW: Whitewashing fire risks in the San Bernardino National Forest could be costly.
The allegations made by a fired U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman are unsettling for local mountain and foothill residents.

Ruth Wenstrom, the nine-year public-affairs officer for the San Bernardino National Forest, claims she was terminated July 2 because she refused last year to downplay the severity of the wildfire danger in the forest.

She was subsequently transferred to another job, filed an Equal Employment Opportunity complaint, was transferred again and then fired for using her work computer for nonwork-related activities and other listed violations of policy. We’re not interested so much in the personnel matter of Wenstrom’s seeking reinstatement, which will work itself out through channels, as we are in the specter of the Forest Service’s trying to mask danger with happy talk.

Wenstrom claims that in April 2006, National Forest officials were told not to request budgetary augmentation funds, known as “severity dollars,” that they had sought and received in the past. As a result, they would have to cut the number of fire engines staffed in the forest, she said.

She was told to draft talking points to address the public’s concerns about having fewer firefighters and engines in the nation’s most urbanized forest, filled with millions of dead trees and drought-dried brush.
When she described the reduced funding as “a problem,” she said, her supervisor told her the talking points should say that “everything is fine out there in the forest, and there is no need for additional funds.”

She refused and was quickly removed from her public-relations job, Wenstrom claims.

Her boss, Matt Mathes, the Forest Service’s regional press officer based in Vallejo, was upbeat the next month about Forest Service strategy, despite announced plans to cut the number of staffed engines from 25 seven days a week to 15 on weekdays and 20 on weekends, which as few as 12 engines staffed at times. “Oh, they’re in great shape,” Mathes said in May 2006. “I think they’re in a situation where there’s one of two less fire engines in a certain location, but they’ll be moving resources around. We’ll be able to bring in more engines when there’s a need.”

But Gene Zimmerman, San Bernardino National Forest’s former supervisor, dismissed that rosy viewpoint at the time. “They can say what they want about moving resources, but they won’t be here in initial attack,” he said. “We need the resources here before the fires start. … This says we didn’t learn very much in the fall of ‘03,” when the deadly Old Fire and Grand Prix Fire raged across local slopes.

“Local Forest Service officials are really under the gun to talk the party line,” Zimmerman said then.

Gerald Newcombe, former San Bernardino fire chief and president of the Arrowhead Communities Fire Safe Council, said “any reduction will have a negative effect on initial attack. Our fire problem is still extreme. Initial attack is critical.”

Differences of opinion on levels of danger and preparedness are to be expected. What is not acceptable is any official whitewashing of reduced firefighting capacity and lessened protection for the public.

Not when lives are at stake.