Turning up the heat
Schiff, Antonovich want congressional hearing based on LA Times reports of water-dropping failures during Station Fire
By André Coleman 12/31/2009
Congressman Adam Schiff wants to make one thing perfectly clear:
“Our firefighters and emergency responders did a heroic job” in battling last summer’s Station Fire, Los Angeles County’s largest fire ever, which cost the lives of two firefighters and caused more than $1 billion in damages.
But, the Pasadena representative wrote to the Weekly on his Blackberry Tuesday from Washington, “Sufficient questions have been raised about decisions made during the early stages of the Station Fire that a federal investigation is warranted.”
Although Schiff, a former federal prosecutor, is a Democrat, and LA County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who represents Altadena, La Cañada Flintridge and many other foothill communities affected by the wildfires, is a Republican, on this point they are in total agreement.
In his own call for a congressional investigation into the response to the Station Fire, Antonovich, in a letter to US Sen. Dianne Feinstein, accused the US Forest Service of falsely reporting on its reasons for not deploying aircraft capable of assisting firefighters battling the blaze.
“Recent press reports indicate that the Forest Service was not forthright in reporting why water-dropping aircraft were not deployed in the earliest stage of the Station Fire,” Antonovich wrote. “Originally, the Forest Service reasoned that the mountainous terrain prevented aircraft water drops. However, their logbooks reveal that their own incident commanders repeatedly asked for air support. What’s needed is a congressional investigation into the false reports by the Forest Service and its failure to stop the fire before it spread.”
Antonovich’s letter came shortly after Schiff called for a congressional probe, following a Dec. 21 Los Angeles Times report showing records contradicted the claim that helicopters and tanker planes could not be deployed due to the steep terrain where the fire was burning.
The Forest Service did not return several calls for comment. The agency also did not respond the Times’ request for comment.
According to the Times story, fire commanders on the ground called in air tankers three separate times during a 6 ½-hour period, but one order for an air tanker was canceled, and a helitanker did not reach the scene in the Angeles National Forest until an hour after its scheduled arrival.
“There were some communication problems among the agencies. That is natural,” said Altadena Town Council Chair Gino Sund. “Those were worked out pretty quickly. I can’t comment on what the Forest Service did early on in the fire. If there is an investigation, they should make sure we have some pre-agreed upon protocol. In that sense, if it takes an investigation that’s fine.”
According to Sund, representatives from Antonovich’s office plan to meet with firefighters, members of the Town Council and Sheriff’s Department deputies to discuss communications and evacuation procedures used during fires.
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