Associated Press
SEATTLE (AP) _ The mop-up crew that lost four members when it was overtaken
by a rapidly spreading forest fire had twice the number of rookies
recommended by experts, authorities say.
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The 21-member team included eight who were inexperienced in fighting
wildfires, The Seattle Times reported Friday. The paper and the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer also said firefighters generally were not supposed to
fight forest fires aggressively in the area where the four died.
A five-member squad should not have more than one rookie on it, said Billy
Terry, branch chief for fire training at the U.S. Forest Service in
Washington, D.C. Two of the four who died were teen-agers, and a third, a
21-year-old, had limited training, according to his father.
The fifth, squad leader Jason Emhoff, 21, of Yakima, survived but may lose
his hands because of severe burns.
``Very, very seldom would you have more than one or two people on a squad at
the very basic level,'' Terry told The Seattle Times. ``We try not to
compromise that.''
Firefighters Tom L. Craven, 30; Karen L. Fitzpatrick, 18; Devin A. Weaver,
21; and Jessica L. Johnson, 19, were killed Tuesday when a 25-acre fire,
fueled by wind and heat, blasted out of a canyon in the Okanogan and
Wenatchee national forests in the northern Cascade Range.
Weaver's father, Ken Weaver, told the Post-Intelligencer his son had 40
hours of training before being sent to the fire.
``What kind of idiot would send a kid with no experience into a situation
like that?'' Weaver said.
Officials have noted for more than a year that a tight labor market has
hampered efforts to recruit, train and retain seasonal firefighters in the
nation's forests.
At least 14 members of the crew, including the four who died, deployed
emergency fire shelters when the Thirty Mile Fire blew up Tuesday evening.
One firefighter managed to save two hikers by sheltering them in her tent,
though they are designed to hold just one person.
The fire was in a federally designated 8,500-acre research natural area with
limits on firefighting efforts. Officials at the fire scene Thursday told
the P-I they could not say when they realized that was the case.
The area's management plan specifies that in the event of fire, ``the
preferred suppression strategy is confinement.''
At the time the flames exploded, firefighting efforts included aerial drops
of fire retardant _ a tactic that, according to the management plan,
``should be avoided where possible.''
Andy Stahl, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental
Ethics in Eugene, Ore., told the newspapers that firefighters did not know
they were in a minimum fire suppression area and thus never contacted the
area's managers or followed the guidelines.
Photo Courtesy King 5.com
Planes drop fire retardant to knock down the leading edge of the fire.
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``I know hindsight is 20-20,'' Stahl said, ``but it's when you fight fire
aggressively that people can get hurt.''
If managers had been contacted, they could have warned of ``places that
should be avoided even by experienced firefighters,'' said George Wooten, a
scientist who helped prepare a report that established the area.
The tactics were defended by David Johnson, fire management officer for the
Olympic National Forest, who has been temporarily reassigned to the
firefighting effort.
``If this fire had been left to burn and just supervise, it would still have
burned these acres _ probably much quicker,'' Johnson said.
Seattle Wildfire Deaths Explained
