Forest Service should change firefighting policies, report says

Sharply questioning the U.S. Forest Service's aggressiveness, the Los Angeles County Fire Department says in a report on the deadly Station fire that the federal agency should change its policies to allow night flying by water-dropping helicopters and make greater use of local reinforcements to attack any blaze in the Angeles National Forest. In the report, a review of the first five days of the Station fire, County Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman urges the Board of Supervisors to lobby the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Congress to alter the Forest Service's practices to ensure "a timely appropriate response to wildfires" in the Angeles. The report suggests that a fiercer air assault by the Forest Service -- and by the county at one crucial point -- might have kept the Station fire small. It says the Forest Service must change its approach from "taking what the fire will give us" -- a defensive posture -- to "hitting the fire early and hard." Unlike the county and Los Angeles city fire departments, the Forest Service does not deploy water-dropping aircraft at night, because of safety worries. County helicopters helped contain the Station fire to 15 acres during its first day, after it broke out at the edge of the forest above La Cañada Flintridge. Because the fire was burning on federal land, the Forest Service later took control and the choppers were sent home. After Forest Service commanders rolled back their response, the fire began to spread overnight, and no helicopters returned until about two hours after first light on the critical second day, The Times has reported...read more