The official report on the Yarnell Hill fire which claimed the lives of 19 firefighters has managed to find no issues whatsoever with the incident. Apparently no mistakes were made by any of the firefighters or their leadership, and there are no lessons to be learned from this tragedy.
Nothing went wrong in the Yarnell Hill Fire, which killed 19 wildland firefighters in June.
This according to the “Serious Accident Investigation Report” into the fire, released this weekend by federal, state, and local firefighting officials in Prescott.
“The Team found no indication of negligence, reckless actions, or violations of policy or protocol,” the report states.
It certainly seems that something must have gone wrong when 19 men, most of them young men, are dead.
In fact, certain fire officials who now say everything went according to protocol had been among those assessing blame and pointing out mistakes leading up to the deaths of the Granite Mountain Hotshots.
Arizona Deputy State Forester Jerry Payne previously said it looked like Eric Marsh, superintendent of the hotshot crew, had violated basic wildfire-safety rules, although Payne added that many decisions made by those leading wildfire-fighting crews are calculated risks, rather than strictly rule-book decisions.
Prescott Wildland Division Chief Darrell Willis suggested in an interview with ABC News that the crew “could have made it” had the U.S. Forest Service delivered all the air-tankers that were requested for the Yarnell Hill Fire.
Neither of these findings was included in the report, despite Payne and Willis’ prescence among fire officials presenting investigators’ conclusions at Prescott High School on Saturday.
Not everyone is convinced, however:
Here is my analysis of what is going on with this report: Substantial mistakes were made by both the fire team and by their leaders. Their leaders wrote the report, and certainly were not going to incriminate themselves, particularly given that they likely face years of litigation. They could have perhaps outlined the mistakes the team made, but the families and supporters of the dead men would have raised a howl if the dead firefighters were blamed for mistakes while the leadership let themselves off the hook, and surely would have pushed back on the culpability of the firefighting effort’s management.
So this report represents an implicit deal being offered to the families — we will let your dead rest in peace by not highlighting the mistakes they made if you will lay off of us and the mistakes we made. We will just blame it on God (I kid you not, see Prescott chief’s statements here). Most Arizonans I know seem willing to have these folks die as heroes who succumbed to the inherent risks of the profession, rather than stupid errors, so we may never have an honest assessment of what happened. And yet again the opportunity to do a major housecleaning of wildland firefighting is missed.
