Fire Review Panel Faults Bureaucracy

A state panel created to review the wildfires that ravaged Southern California last fall warned that such tragedies were certain to be repeated unless public policy makers learned to “put the protection of lives and property ahead of competing political agendas.”

The governor’s Blue Ribbon Fire Commission urged officials Wednesday to eliminate political and jurisdictional barriers among federal, state and local agencies that have their own sometimes conflicting requirements and responsibilities.

For example, the report cited confusion as to whether there was a requirement that all available state resources, including civilian contract aircraft, be exhausted before federal assistance could be requested. It noted conflicting land management and environmental laws and regulations at all levels of government. And, it said that the California Department of Forestry was operating a fire protection system year-round on an eight-month budget allocation.

The panel’s 247-page report made four dozen recommendations to more effectively fight wildfires. They included improving coordination and communication among fire agencies, more training of firefighters, and beefing up personnel and equipment from air tankers to walkie-talkies.

Given its heft, however, critics said the report was remarkable for what it did not address, such as how to pay for those proposals, where to draw the line on burgeoning development in wild-land areas, and how to deal with the essential cause of Southern California’s fire problems -- vast swaths of aging chaparral and beetle-infested trees.

“The commission was handed a task to address issues in and around communities, but ignored where the fires come from,” said fire ecology expert Tom Bonnicksen, professor emeritus at Texas A&M; University and visiting professor at UC Davis.

“What was missing was the fundamental problem of all that fuel beyond the edges of communities.”

San Diego Fire Chief Jeff Bowman, one of the 34 panel members, called the report thorough, but said it dealt more with generalities than specifics.

“A lot of the recommendations don’t identify the action step and who’s going to do it,” Bowman said. “My concern is to make sure that all the recommendations are implemented. I’m hopeful that will happen.... But I’m not convinced that will happen.”

Bowman said one of the report’s major shortcomings was its failure to specify how needed improvements and changes would be paid for.

“That’s a huge one,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger said the governor was withholding comment because he had not reviewed the report.

In a letter to Schwarzenegger, retired state Sen. William Campbell, who chaired the panel, said that although the members were “sensitive to the financial plight of California government at all levels,” they had concluded that few of its “fiscal recommendations would have meaningful value in the absence of critical public policy changes that must precede them.”

In an interview later, Campbell said, “Look up at the San Bernardino Mountains and what do you see? You see 1 million beetle-killed trees, loads of vegetation that hasn’t been cleared, and people saying, ‘Let’s leave things the way they are, this is the way nature intended it to be.’ ”

“Yet, a new fire season has already started,” he added. “Wouldn’t it make sense to do something ahead of time to prevent another massive siege of Southern California? Things like controlled burns, cutting down of dead trees, covering eaves, and installing fireproof roofs.”

The report was more blunt: “California is a fire prone state.”

In Southern California, the fire hazards in the fall are daunting: a dry Mediterranean climate combines with hot, gusty winds that blow across rugged terrain choked with parched chaparral and dead timber.

Many cities and counties have adopted new building codes that ban the use of extremely combustible building materials such as wood roofing shingles. Others have stiffened the requirements for clearing brush.

The rules recognize a single reality. “There are three factors that affect fires,” Frank Beall, a professor of environmental science at UC Berkeley, said after last fall’s catastrophic blazes. “You can’t do anything about weather, you can’t do much about topography, but you can do something about fuel.”

And one major component of that fuel, he said, is the ever increasing number of homes built amid that tinder-dry brush and timber.

Jay Watson, director of the Wilderness Society’s wild-land fire program, said he thought the panel had overlooked the importance of prescribed burns.

“I think it’s critically important we prioritize protecting homes and communities, but at the same time, we need to restore fire to wild lands in a safe way through prescribed burns.”

The magnitude of October’s devastation was staggering: 739,597 acres burned; 3,361 homes and 36 commercial properties destroyed; 500 farmlands torched; 246 people injured; 24 people dead, including one firefighter.

At the height of the blazes, 15,631 emergency personnel were assigned to a fire line that stretched more than 100 miles.

The panel of firefighters, lawmakers and residents was established by former Gov. Gray Davis and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in November to determine which firefighting efforts worked and which ones did not, and to provide recommendations for improving response and operational relationships.

In the course of seven hearings, “it became abundantly clear that conflicting public policy mandates, lengthy bureaucratic administrative processes and procedures, and antagonistic litigation tactics were the most significant barriers to reducing the threat of wild-land fires and preventing periodic, catastrophic loss of life and property from such disasters,” the report said.