Wrong trucks for the job; condors happy, anyway.
You probably heard about the small fire in gp near the zoo yesterday. I couldn’t see it, but I knew something was up when helicopters started flying above our building and we started a-shaking. I live on a sort of crest, the tippy-top point between the park, the 5, and slk or downtown. I can understand why helicopters don’t want to waste fuel going higher than they need to, but this does give us, below, a rather intimate relationship with the bottoms of these flying things…
Photo: Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times
The news media online, mostly TV stations at first, but including Daily News (!) all had the same info:
Authorities evacuated 16 California condors and two King vultures from the area, Jacobs said.
(Well, that’s the part I was interested in, anyway.) They also wrote:
This fire was apparently in thick brush and trees that were not burned in the 1,200 acre blaze that was set by children playing with matches on May 8, 2007.
That’s weird. Since I followed the stories about that fire pretty damn closely, and even started this blog because of it, I knew that it was a homeless man, who started the fire with his cigarette, and got burned as he tried to put it out. (Reminder to Tom LaBonge: Fire is often started by fire, including SMOKERS that you still allow in parts of the park.) So I wrote to Brian Humphreys at LAFD Blogspot yesterday, and he confirmed that it wasn’t bratty and badly-raised kids who started the May 2007 fire, but they did start this one, in March, 2007. Only, it wasn’t kids, it was 2 teen boys, 16 and 17, who turned themselves in, or had parents who did.
Brian said no word yet on what caused the one yesterday, but added:
There were indeed a multitude of aircraft, including fire, law enforcement – with both at times outnumbered by the news media.
In this case, I think the news media might have been better off talking to their fact checkers.
I’m pleased that the LAFD put this out in only 3 hours. They certainly worked hard, with 200 firefighters deployed. However, I am still surprised and disturbed – okay, pissed off – that their main criteria for success is still saving people, buildings, and — well, and nothing. Nothing else counts. The rest is ignored in their reports (although not necessarily by the firefighters themselves, of course) , including habitats, trees, 25 acres of vegetation and animals. As I complained loud and clearly last year, (I thought) there’s NO SUCH THING as “just a brush fire” in the middle of several hundred acres of protected animal, bird and landscape habitat.
I doubt if the LAFD could have done a better job with what they have now. Probably not. But why won’t Fire Chief Berry signify the importance of, and make strategic plans for, fires in a wildlife sanctuary? I’ll tell you why: because what they need to put out fires in the park is different from any other part of the city, and the LAFD and/or the city, whoever makes these decisions, refuses to buy the right kinds of trucks. I investigated this a year ago. Mr. Humphreys acknowledged my facts as being correct. They cannot get into heavy brush or hills using the trucks they have now! And this will just continue, as we continue to have dry weather like this.
According to the info on the LAFD blog, they used 5 brush patrols, which is all the city owns. But these are very small trucks, with a small amount of water. We’re talking 25 burning acres, people. The LAFD has only OES Type 1 trucks, the ordinary garden variety, and the longer the hoses, the less water pressure. They are reduced to sitting on the roads, not the trails. Fire truck numbers go up as the trucks get more rugged, and are able to maneuver in difficult terrain such as national forests, where they use OES Type 4.
I am begging you, Mayor V, can’t you give us at least one Type 2 truck for Griffith Park? Only God can give us rain, but you can give us something big and red and powerful. Thx in advance.
Donna Barstow
Griffith Park is the 2nd biggest park in the US, and I'm just the person to investigate it! I've lived here for over 25 years. I was part of the PROS Committee in Griffith Park Neighborhood Council and am on the Housing & Tenants Rights Committee in the Silver Lake NC. I'm in the LA Press Club, and you can find some of my articles in the LA Weekly and the Los Feliz Ledger. I'm a cartoonist for Parade Magazine, The New Yorker, LA Times, Slate, & most major media. Questions and contacts welcome.
4 Comments
Brian Humphrey
Donna, I am deeply pleased that you are using this forum to share your passionate concern. Please know that some (but certainly not all) of the conclusions and suggestions offered in your post above are a step or two beyond fair (“nothing else counts”) to the men and women of your LAFD. There are also some significant innaccuracies. You may wish to revisit your notes (the LAFD has 15 Brush Patrols and the wildland Fire Engines used by allied agencies are Type 3). I warmly welcome you to contact and visit with the Battalion Chief in charge of Griffith Park area (http://lafd.org/batt5.htm), and possibly make formal arrangements to visit his or her Command Post as an observer in a Griffith Park fire to come – as sadly they will. In closing, there is no reason for anyone to believe that a different type of response vehicle would have had meaningful effect in this particular fire – or for that matter, the vast majority of blazes handled by the LAFD in the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone. While you are welcome to form an opinion from the postings of anonymous commenters to your blog, I would hope that you would balance such conjecture with knowledge directly imparted by experienced and yes, caring fire service officers who guide us to protect this great City.
Respectfully Yours in Safety and Service,
Brian Humphrey
Firefighter/Specialist
Public Service Officer
Los Angeles Fire Department
Donna Barstow
Officer Humphrey, it’s an honor to have you visit. And thanks for your generosity in inviting me to visit a real fire station!
I would be the last person to say I understood firefighting, and that is why I humbly get advice and information from you and other firefighters.
And I’m sure I’ve been wrong about many things in my life! However, I’ve reviewed my notes and my posts and my memories and my conversations with many Officers in the LAFD, and I stand behind my research. More than 3 firemen told me there were only 4 or 5 Brush Patrols, and you can find some of these quotes if you search in this blog.
Same confirmation on the types of truck. Last year, this was my conversation with you: on July 6, 2007, you said: “The LAFD has only OES type 1 trucks, nothing higher. None of the three other types which are recommended for wildland fires!…Officer Humphrey said none of the neighboring Fire Departments have the three other types of trucks either, but Ventura County does.”
Maybe that’s what you mean by allied agencies.
It could be that I’m foolishly optimistic but I do believe that with better, more rugged trucks, our LAFD could do a much better job of fighting fire in the terrain of Griffith Park.
Kristin Sabo
Donna,
I was watering Amir’s Garden while the LAFD et al were working on the fire. (Amir’s Garden is on the opposite side of the same canyon where the fire was started.) I had a pretty darned good view of most of the effort to extinguish it, maybe the best view possible. As the steward-caretaker of Amir’s ( http://www.Amirsgarden.org ) I was one of the folks with the most to lose personally in terms of plants, animals, and such if firefighters didn’t knock that thing down fast. Needless to say, I was watching the entire effort VERY carefully! I did not see any way in which this particular effort could have been any more efficient without violating safety standards.
The May 8 2007 Griffith fire was started by a Camp Pendelton Marine — maybe an ex-Marine, who received 2nd and 3rd degree burns. No conclusive report has been released to the public, which I find very interesting.
Two kids visiting from…. Ohio, I think… who were playing with fireworks started the March fire behind Warner Bros.
Brian,
I totally appreciate everything LAFD does for us. I will say, however, that your summaries more often than not fail to include the LA City Park Rangers when they did in fact assist in the effort. I was disappointed to read that was again the case with your summary of this fire. I saw at least one Park Ranger water tender and at least one of their engines on-scene. Credit where credit is due.
I assume the arson unit is working on this fire. From my excellent vantage point at the Garden, the ignition point was in a location that pretty much screams “arson”. That makes me very nervous…
Thank you guys for knocking down that fire before it spread to my side of the canyon!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(and Brian — way to go on that rumored ‘legal action’. You’re a good man, Charlie Brown. Hang tough.) :-)
Brian Humphrey
@Donna,
I look forward to your visit with the staff at Battalion 5 Headquarters, and if possible, hope to get you out in the hills of Griffith Park aboard one of those 15 (for indeed that is how many you paid for) LAFD Brush Patrols. :)
While no single vehicle is going to answer all of the many challenges that face a crew on a wildfire, I think you’d be surprised at how these nimble and highly affordable ‘quick attack’ vehicles are able to spryly respond across the diverse geography of the Santa Monica Mountains. We’d love to have more, bigger, better faster of everything the taxpayers so generously provide us to with, but it is not in our financial realm.
If I were in charge, we’d have 20 Helitankers year round… but I digress :)
Most importantly, I hope that during your visit, you’ll meet the PEOPLE of the LAFD who (yes, along with allied agencies) are doing a wonderful job to minimize the omnipresent threat of fire to life, property and the environment. For at the end of the day, it is the people and not vehicles that do the greatest good in tackling the flames.
@Kristin,
Thank you for your kind words, which are humbly accepted on behalf of *all* who were involved in the response to this fire. We’re pleased that Amir’s Garden was not directly damaged by the flames or our firefighting efforts.
You are correct in regards to the location ‘screaming’ arson, but as I (and Angela Landsbury) have learned over the years, the first and most obvious suspect is not always the culprit – and even more importantly, I am formally bound to report verbatim what the lead Investigator tells me. After a fire, I routinely ask them how I might best categorize or describe the blaze, and rarely do they authorize me to use ‘accidental’ or ‘suspicious’ or another more descriptive term. If they say “The fire is under investigation”, that is how I (rightfully) must report it.
As for the ‘media and public relations’ report of Sunday’s fire in Griffith Park:
http://lafd.blogspot.com/2008/07/firefighters-battle-griffith-park-fire.html
…that report was penned by my colleague Ron Myers.
As for the important work of allied agencies…
When and where I am made aware or able to easily acquire** information about allied agency participation – especially within our City or Fire Service family, I am happy to offer credit when and where possible, or it seems natural or appropriate. Such was the case on Tuesday:
http://lafd.blogspot.com/2008/07/quick-action-by-lafd-spares-el-sereno.html
…when I was told by LAFD Chief Stormes Staff Assistant that the requested Water Tenders responded and were used. That much said, *everybody* in the world hates that stupid preamble (first paragraph) in our blog post, and the phrase “Department of Recreation and Parks” – we are supposed to use proper agency names and not generic ‘Parks Department’ or ‘Park Rangers’ without first mentioning the full agency name, becomes a mouthful. How is that for a run-on sentence?
When and where there are meritorious actions (again, made known to me), I am indeed honored and deeply pleased to share the word. Sadly that is not always the case, and with the same text having to fit on a single half-page for our PDF after-action reports:
http://lafd.org/info.htm
…I am truly challenged to keep things short and sadly yes, LAFD centric.
I am sure you realize that there can be more than three dozen agencies involved in even a simple fire, and I try to be as brief as possible in my written reports – written mostly from a unilaterally LAFD perspective, for __as my boss quite clearly says__, that’s specifically what they pay me for. :)
That’s not to say that I don’t admire and deeply appreciate our colleagues from the California Department of Water Resources, the Los Angeles County Fire Department Health Hazardous Materials Division, or the Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran, M.D., but that unless there is something remarkable, we often leave it to those agencies to write their own agency-celebratory releases. :)
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** I regretfully cannot obtain authoritative ‘right now – yes or no’ answers from most City or County agencies on the phone after business hours.
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If Rec and Parks (see I did shorten it!) admin staff will give me a call during or immediately following an event – much like the CERT Coordinator routinely does, I will be happy to include as much information as possible. Sadly, that has yet to happen.
In closing, thanks for the encouragement to hang tough. My assignment is the focus of much inadvertent abuse, and I’m doing the best I can. Thanks for reading this diatribe, written from my home computer while balancing my 3 year-old on my knee. In looking at the text above, it’s hard to tell when he spilled his milk on the keyboard :?
Donna and Kristin, please stay safe and accept my thanks for sharing in the love, nurturing and protection of our great city.
Respectfully Yours in Safety and Service,
Brian Humphrey
Firefighter/Specialist
Public Service Officer
Los Angeles Fire Department