Report rips expensive decisions in Big Sur wildfire fight - The Santa Rosa Press Democrat

Mike Warren, a retired National Park Service firefighter who reviewed the report, questioned the wisdom of suppressing fires in remote wilderness where flames can help eliminate brush and other flammable vegetation that could fuel a later wildfire.

When Warren was fire management officer at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, they would let blazes burn in the wilderness if they were confident the fire would stay in the park.

The challenge in a place like the tourist-dependent Big Sur area is pressure from politicians, homeowners, businesses, loggers and ranchers to control the fire, Warren said.

“When is enough enough?” he said. “When do you back off say, ‘This is it. We’re just going to let it do its thing.’ That takes some real political will.”

The Forest Service’s internal review inspired Ingalsbee to file public records requests for other documents that led to his report.

Among his findings:

— About a fifth of the area burned was from fires set to clear brush and vegetation between outer perimeters and the active fire. One of these blazes jumped fire lines. These burnout operations created additional smoke and cost an estimated $50 million.

— A nearly $39 million air campaign, including large air tankers that cost $5,720 per hour, was largely ineffective. Retardant is effective at slowing flames only where ground crews can remove vegetation to create containment lines. But drops were done deep in steep, rugged wilderness where it was too dangerous to send crews, and even where flames never reached.

— Bulldozers, which cost $1,700 per hour, tore up wilderness, creating what Ingalsbee called “ghost roads” that will remain for years. The Forest Service spent an estimated $1 million a day for weeks repairing damage done by dozers.

The report concluded that once the blaze that broke out July 22, 2016, entered wilderness, there was little chance of stopping it before fall rains fell.

Chad Hanson, an expert on fire and director of the John Muir Project, a nonprofit environmental group, said the cost was stunning, but the approach to fire was business as usual.

“It’s sort of shocking that this massive amount of taxpayer money is being spent trying to suppress backcountry fires that are weather-driven and can’t be stopped until the weather changes, rather than focusing resources on protecting communities,” Hanson said. “On the other hand, I’m not surprised the Forest Service is doing this because it’s been their practice for years.”

One beneficiary of the firefighting effort was Tom Little Bear Nason, who lives in a homestead in the national forest his family has owned for 150 years. He was also a contractor on the fire, with a team of dozer operators.

Nason, chairman of the Esselen Tribe of Monterey County, credited the suppression effort with helping save his property. But he said costs shot up when managers went overboard on backfires and cut contingency lines too far from the fire.

He also criticized the leadership on the fire, which changed every couple of weeks, for disregarding a pre-attack fire plan drawn up by local, state and federal agencies, tribal leaders, environmentalists and homeowners that included information on protecting historic and cultural sites.

He said those plans “got chucked out the window” and led to significant losses. A homesteader cabin burned to the ground, sacred sites such as burial grounds were plowed over, and a rock where tribal members gave birth was struck by a bulldozer.

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