Researchers question firefighters

By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS - Associated Press
Sunday, August 26, 2007 2:08 AM PDT

Members of a U.S. Forest Service hot shot crew monitor a back burn Thursday along Warm Springs Creek west of Ketchum. When five forest firefighters died in Southern California last year, investigators blamed risky decisions by managers. Such decisions are perhaps too common among the federal government’s gung-ho firefighting corps, and the U.S. Forest Service has commissioned a study to find out if that is true.

MOSCOW, Idaho — When five forest firefighters died in Southern California last year, investigators blamed risky decisions by managers.

But is the gung-ho culture of wildland firefighters also to blame? The U.S. Forest Service has commissioned a study to find out if it needs to change the attitudes of its staff toward fighting fires.

Firefighters, like astronauts, can share feelings of invincibility, a ‘‘right stuff’’ mentality that is dangerous, said University of Idaho researcher Chuck Harris, who is leading the study.

‘‘Rather than question authority, they plug ahead and believe they can beat the fire,’’ Harris said.

Researchers are spending the summer on fire lines, interviewing firefighters.

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The goal is to find out if firefighters and their managers are too focused on beating the flames, and not focused enough on safety, Harris said.

Fatalities from wildfires have risen from an average of 6.6 per year in the 1930s to 18 per year since the turn of the century, Harris said. Last year, 24 wildland firefighters died.

Getting far less attention are numerous ‘‘near misses’’ among the approximately 15,000 firefighters in the field each year, Harris said.

The Forest Service spent a record $2.5 billion fighting wildfires on 9.9 million acres last year. That amounted to 45 percent of its total budget, Harris said.

Harris said fighting wildfires is second only to warfare among the most dangerous activities for government employees. More housing being built near the woods, along with prolonged droughts, indicate the number of wildfires is likely to grow in coming years, he said.

Mark Rey, under secretary of the Department of Agriculture, has said the priorities of the Forest Service are unchanged, with the protection of firefighters first, residents second, structures third and natural resources last.

But do those priorities filter down to managers and to fire crews?

Harris said one disturbing statistic is that in wildfires, accidents and ‘‘burnovers’’ tend to be the leading causes of death. That’s in contrast to urban firefighting, where cardiac arrest is the leading cause of death.

That indicates that wildland firefighters are more likely to be caught in flames and burned to death because of risky behavior, Harris speculated.

The university was contracted by the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Experiment Station of Fort Collins, Colo., to interview firefighters this summer. A preliminary report is due in the spring.

Jim Saveland, a program manager at the Rocky Mountain station, said the study arises out of findings in the corporate world that suggested that people working in hierarchies are often reluctant to speak up, even if they see problems.

‘‘We want to know why people do or don’t speak up when they see, in our case, a threatening situation or a safety problem arising,’’ Saveland said.

Not everyone agrees there is a need for that study.

Casey Judd, business manager of the Federal Wildland Fire Service Association, which represents all firefighters in federal agencies, said no firefighter or fire boss is going to be so bent on beating a fire that they deliberately court disaster.

‘‘From our perspective, it isn’t an issue,’’ Judd, who lives near Pocatello, Idaho, said. ‘‘Our nation’s wildland firefighters are the best trained in the world.’’

Regardless of how many lessons are gleaned from fatalities, the job is still inherently dangerous, Judd said.

Firefighters make the best decisions they can, based on experience and science.

‘‘Those decisions can look really really bad if Mother Nature wants to change things,’’ Judd said. ‘‘Sometimes, you are helpless.’’

But Harris believes that firefighting can be made safer.

Some of the deadliest fires — like Storm King in 1994 in Colorado that killed 14 firefighters, and the Thirtymile Fire in 1991 in Washington that killed four — have focused attention on the role of leadership in such situations, Harris said.

The Forest Service asks its fire crews to fight fires and take risks, but also to focus on safety first, Harris said. That’s a contradictory message.

‘‘It can often be difficult for firefighters to focus on being safe and aggressive at the same time,’’ said UI grad student Alexis Lewis, who is doing the interviews. ‘‘When problems arise and situations on the fireline get intense, the norm is to ‘put one’s head down and dig line harder and faster.’’’

In the case of the Thirtymile Fire, an investigation found that fire bosses had broken all 10 of the Forest Service’s standard safety rules and ignored numerous signs of danger.

In July 2003, two firefighters died when they were overtaken by the Cramer Fire in central Idaho. The firefighters were clearing trees for a helicopter landing site, unaware there was new fire in a drainage below. The fire ran up the ridge and killed them. Investigators found fire managers failed to deploy lookouts, to monitor the firefighters or notify them of the fire’s spread, and failed to order them to a safety zone.

In the Esperanza fire, investigators concluded ‘‘a risky decision or a series of risky decisions appear to have contributed to this dangerous situation from which there was no room for error.’’

The five firefighters were overrun by flames as they tried to protect a house. In announcing those findings, Forest Service Chief Forester Gail Kimbell said decisions by command officers and supervisors to try to protect buildings were a factor.

‘‘They underestimated, accepted or misjudged the risk to firefighter safety,’’ Kimbell has said.