Federal Official Local Wildfire
Preparedness in Parklands
• Interior Secretary Says Saved Houses
Are Proof that Fuel Modification Program Works
Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne was
briefed on Malibu-area fire issues last week, as the
cabinet officer from Washington took a quick hike along a
ragged ridge above Malibu where the Canyon Fire was stopped
last October.
The secretary was in the Santa Monica
Mountains to talk up a federal program aimed at removing fire
fuels from federal lands. While here, he was briefed on the
conflicting orders given local homeowners about brush clearance
and nearby environmentally sensitive habitat areas.
Kempthorne also said he would look into a
California U.S. Senator’s complaint that federal
officials have failed to provide promised aerial firefighting
planes, and said $1.6 billion was spent between 2001-08 on
reducing fuels on 10 million miles of federal lands, mostly in
western states. Environmentalists have criticized federal
efforts for concentrating on timber harvesting and
ranching enhancements at the expense of the environment.
But the Interior Secretary said most of the
effort has been to increase defensible spaces on urban-wildland
interfaces, and he pointed to unburned houses along Rambla
Pacifico, surrounded by singed brush, as “proof of the
effectiveness of the defensible space program.”
National Park Service rangers told
Kempthorne of local worries about contradictory directions from
fire safety officials and Coastal Commission requirements
that environmentally sensitive habitat area not be cut down
even if they are near houses. “We are going to have to
hear about efforts to reach a solution there,”
Kempthorne said.
The former Idaho governor noted that 1.5
million acres in Florida and other drought-stricken Southeast
states have burned this year. “The rising cost of fuel is
certainly going to impede us this year, but certainly not on
the initial attack,” he said. “Safety is our
primary issue and we will get the job done.”
Kempthorne was interviewed last week while
surveying fire lines on Rambla Pacifico near Saddle Peak,
where flames were stopped on the eastern flank of the Canyon
Fire last October. He also visited fuel-thinning projects in
Chesebro Canyon, north of the 101 freeway.
He said he will look into the status of key
National Guard aircraft based at Point Mugu that still do not
have necessary replacement equipment they need to drop flame
retardant on brushfires.
“If there is a problem with that
apparatus, that is something we will look into,” said the
member of President George Bush’s cabinet.
The C-130 Hercules aircraft stationed by
the California National Guard at Point Mugu have been useless
for firefighting for two years now, because an aircraft upgrade
has left the planes incapable of loading the large cargo sleds
that can hold water and mix it with fire retardant.
In addition, the sleds that have been in
use for decades for fighting wildfires across western
states are old and worn-out, and incompatible with the
new-generation C-130s now protecting California at Point Mugu,
15 miles west of Malibu. Six C-130s are stationed at the
Channel Islands National Guard Station, next to Navy
Base Ventura County.
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., last
November demanded that the Air Force and U.S. Forest
Service solve the problem before this summer. The problem still
persists, and last month Feinstein demanded that the White
House move two C-130s from the Midwest to Point Mugu now.
Not having the planes ready, Feinstein
wrote the White House, “is contrary to a
commitment” made by a White House official last November.
“The result will be that tens of millions of Californians
will not have access to this important firefighting
resource for yet another year.”
Kempthorne said last week that the federal
government is not shy about moving aircraft like C-130s,
equipped with the right gear, out west in advance of hazardous
fire weather events. “This is what we did last October,
days in advance of the big Santa Ana events that took off [with
fire] in Malibu,” he said.
But no C-130s were used during the big
firestorms that struck San Diego, Riverside and Los
Angeles counties last fall. Other planes, including a
modified DC-10 leased to the State of California, were used in
the Malibu fires.
Feinstein complained last month that the
closest C-130s “are almost a thousand miles away, and it
will take nearly a whole day for them to be deployable in my
state.”
Kempthorne said he was familiar with the
issue, which is being handled by the Defense and Agriculture
departments that run the military and Forest Service, but not
his Interior Department, which oversees the Bureau of Land
Management and National Parks Service. Because of his lack of
jurisdiction, he said he has only a passing knowledge of the
issue.
An alphabet soup of various firefighting
agencies was visible during Kempthorne’s visit last
week, when no fewer than seven different agencies with
local firefighting responsibilities showed up at Los
Angeles County Fire’s Camp 8 to talk with
Kempthorne.
Present were firefighters or rangers from
Los Angeles and Ventura counties, the Mountains Conservation
and Recreation Authority, State Parks Department, Bureau
of Indian Affairs, BLM and NPS.
