The accusations in the opinion piece are severe and damning if true. If the author is sure of their perception of arson and willful fraud, why haven’t they gone to the FBI or OIG to report it? This smacks of either ignorance, axe grinding, immaturity, or complicity for non-reporting. So which one is it?
Anonymously posting in a small blog/news page for clicks is attention seeking behavior.
If the accounts are accurate, then someone is going to jail. We don’t need that in our fire community.
I think a lot of us feel this way!
I say this person has a bone to pick with the USFS. I worked many years in the fire service ( professional and not forest service) and some of the most knowledgeable and dedicated people I worked with were USFS personnel. They know fire and what it can do and how it can kill. If this individual feels different and knows for fact then he or she should not be afraid of putting their name on the article.
Don’t know if this is all true, but some elements of the editorial have facts that are true! It’s time for full transparency across the board. The truth will set everyone free.
Let’s remember that this is a single editorial piece. Not fact checked journalism. I don’t know of any boot on the ground, regardless of agency, willfully trying to increase acreage or structures burned on a wild fire. If this writer is so sure, they should have named names. But they didn’t. It’s a poorly timed hit piece and those of us who are professionals can see it for what it is.
Carry on
It’s too bad this kind of venting is what is driving our public discourse around our inability to control megafires. We’ll all be better served if both sides can come together and admit they are outmatched by the conditions we saw this summer, so we don’t keep misleading the public about the very real limits to our ability to control fires like the Dixie or Caldor.
This guy jumps right into conspiracy theories about how all the Feds want to manage fires all summer because it’s how they make their overtime. Find me one Fed on the Lassen or Plumas NF that would willingly turn their home Forest into a snag patch for the coin. It’s really insulting.
Both the Red and Green teams got their asses kicked this summer. Looking for someone to blame is natural, and there are some real legitimate mistakes from the firefights (on both sides) that we should be talking about, but implying one team is more at fault than the other isn’t helpful.
There is certainly room for improvement. But, this is way off from my experience as well. Have there been situations where lack of experience has led to not being aggressive, absolutely. But I’ve seen it on all the colors of the engines/crews/overhead. If, this person has or any of you other folks on here, my question would be if there was so much misconduct and delinquency of duties I hope you had reported to the proper chain and not a blog or forum.
Also, small comments about fires being managed, or now just a control burn perpetuate the issue like Pyro said. Don’t confuse complexity of incident due to steep terrain, heavy drought stricken fuels, new era extreme fire environment, lack of resources leading to not wanting to commitment to going direct as “managing fires”.
Nonsense piece of writing grinds my gears. As an employee I know there are legitimate criticisms of the FS but this is so far from the truth it makes me sick.
That is absolute BULL SH!T, you can not tell me we weren’t 100% suppressing fires this year.
This title is mis leading. It’s not interesting at all. It’s divisive bs written by someone who loves to arm chair qb things they have no idea about. Most likely wanted to be a hotshot and couldn’t make it. Or they hurt his feelings at some point.
Absolute garbage. Should be ashamed it even got posted somewhere.
Somehow it seems the author was able to be at all the largest wildfires in California, many all at once. I know air attacks who didn’t make it to all the fires this “professional” did. If he spent all year staring at hotshot crews, counting drip pots vs hand tools, it sounds like he may have been going drop point direct when he should have been taking swift corrective actions with all of his decades of experience, which usually come with rank, expertise and enough intestinal fortitude to speak up.
Disappointing to see someone so dillusional that they are able to fill a document full of lies, assumptions and disinformation. Not to mention it was longer than both dixie zone IAPs combined. More garbage than the human resource message at a type 5 briefing.
Someone out there knows this person and needs to set them straight face to face over a paint by numbers map of whats really going on in OUR fire environment. Then introduce the concept of Duty, Respect and Integrity.
I would gladly do it myself but the author and any friends he may have wouldn’t make the hike.
I’m pretty sure this piece is just someone using posts from their Facebook and Instagram because I read that “structure protection” comment over there and got into an argument with the person and it was removed. This person definitely had an axe to grind from prior posts I saw from them. That person got kicked out of this site after their comments in the lava fire thread.
You cant leave your opinion on their site unless you pay to subscribe.
You don’t know if this is all true??? What kind of stories would you like to make up and add to this masterpiece.
By your name I can guess.
Every agency can sit their and point fingers at the others. Truth is narrative is lazy and reeks of a butthurt individual.
The fs does need an overhaul and a new model. But to specifically target certain groups of it points back to my first post.
I think that might be a little presumptuous to attribute this article to this user.
This was such a poorly written statement that you have to throw the whole body out without extracting the small issues that are present within the USFS. So I’m also not willing to admit there are truths in the article only that there are issues separate from this hit piece that need to be addressed.
However we can say the same thing about every other organization in fire.
Thank you for posting this
Is that you Aaron?