Fire Weather IX – Lies, Damned Lies, and AIR SUPPORT

Now that the weather forecasters are predicting a whole new set of Santa Ana winds to kick up this week, perhaps it’s a good time to look at what we’ve learned from last month’s Santa Ana-driven fire storms.

According to a worrisome investigation that the AP released over the weekend, the answer appears to be: Nothing good.

After earlier investigations by the AP and others triggered a flood of criticism over the state’s allocation of air support and other firefighting resources, Governor Schwarzenegger and California fire officials angrily informed the press (and anyone else who’d listen) that the coordination between state, federal and local resources was “seamless.” And that any delays in getting the much-needed firefighting planes and helicopters to the blazes had mostly to do with high winds—plus, in a few cases, the unavoidable shortage of what are called “fire spotters,” specially-trained individuals who ride in the plane with the pilot and coordinate air drops.

Now, using the Public Records Act, the AP has gotten documents that show the governor and the relevant state officials are….what’s the word I’m looking for?….Oh, yeah…lying.

Yes, pilots were “hampered by strong winds,” reports the AP. But the brave, dedicated fire flyers went up anyway. They got a dozen air tankers and five state helicopters into the air to make more than 70 hours worth of firefighting missions the first day of the firestorm. Oct. 21.

Unfortunately, reports the AP, the planes that flew were only about half the tankers and helicopters that could have been fighting fires that day.

Twenty-eight of 52 aircraft the state was tracking for firefighting efforts remained grounded, and high winds were not listed as the reason. Rather, state officials had not requested them or they were being kept in other parts of the state in case fires broke out there.

This is not at all how it’s supposed to work. According to Sam Padilla, an LA County spokesman I spoke to a few weeks ago, the accepted protocol is to throw everything you have at a big fire to knock it down early. Then, if a second, a third and a fourth fire break out—as they did last month—you start passing resources around as urgency, and threat to structures, demands.

And, indeed, that’s what Los Angeles did on a county-wide level. The state, however, did not.

But, wait. It gets worse.



Not only did California fail to utilize many planes in its own air fleet until raging fires had already consumed hundreds of homes, but the auxiliary air fleet provided by the federal government—some planes from the National Guard, some from the Marines—didn’t take off on time either. State officials swore this had to do with those same pesky high winds.

Paperwork that the AP has acquired shows otherwise:

Tower logs and reports from helicopter crews show that on Oct. 22, the Monday after the wildfires flared up, the helicopters could have flown if state fire spotters had arrived earlier.

Three National Guard helicopter crews were ready and waiting to takeoff by 8:30 that morning, but the spotters didn’t show up until 11:30 a.m.

Once they did arrive, the officials waited another hour before receiving orders to take off. By the time the spotters were ready to fly, high winds had kicked up and grounded the aircraft. None of the helicopters would lift off until the following morning.

The AP estimates that as many as fifteen planes and ‘copters were grounded through this kind of bureaucratic ineptness. (By the way, the Canadians, who are champ fire fighters, don’t require spotters, nor do many of America’s other fire-threatened states, like Florida.)

After the disastrous Cedar Fire and Paradise fires of 2003, a Blue Ribbon Committee was convened to assess the state’s fire plans. The committee recommended in very clear terms that the state better get its act together so that all possible state and federal planes could be up in the air within minutes of the onset of the big fire—since it was determined that hitting a fire early and hard with air drops can make all the difference.

Apparently the state out was having its nails done when that report was issued.

Earlier this month, the San Diego Union ran its own investigative report that outlined in stark terms high-level bungling that kept so many of the much-needed helicopters grounded.

“At the highest level of the state, this system has broken down – for the second time,” said [San Diego]county Supervisor Ron Roberts, who served as the county’s spokesman during the fires and was among dozens of officials who attended daily strategy sessions at the county’s Emergency Operations Center.

It’s time for a full investigation into what went wrong. And what we can do to set it right…… for the fire next time.