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DISCLAIMER: Please fully read the front page of the website (link below) before reading any of the posts ( www.yarnellhillfirerevelations.com )
Abbreviations used below: Wildland Firefighters (WFs) - Firefighters (FFs).
A prudent man foresees evil and hides himself; The simple pass on and are punished. Proverbs 27:12 (NKJV)
Today, GMHS LTC Project Volunteer Dennis Bueschel was excellent explaining areas and I very much enjoyed his commentary throughout the day.
I will add more photos later and edit the page. I have to get to sleep. This is a temporary look at today and I will be away for my birthday the next few days so I will catch up when I am able.
Figure 1. Items @ the Granite Mountain Hot Shot Learning and Tribute Center (GMHS LTC) in Prescott Gateway Mall on 6-30-18 Source: Joy A. Collura
Figure 2. Downtown Prescott 6-30-18 Source: Joy A. Collura
The following video clip below was blasting loudly from a saloon with a live band playing AC/DC "Back in Black" which was occurring on the same street on the same block at the same time as the GMHS memorial bell remembrance ceremony. It was also rodeo weekend in Prescott, so there was a lot of partying going on downtown. Apparently, the GMHS ceremonial group and the local saloon did not confer on the coordination and timing for this short, solemn ceremony. Or did they? I 'm not a WF, but I thought it was ironic that they were playing this song at the same time as the remembrance ceremony because from what many experienced WFs have posted over the years, the GMHS should have stayed back in the black rather than leave their Safety Zone.
This afternoon's June 30, 2018, video clip of the Granite Mountain Hot Shot (GMHS) remembrance ceremony on a stage at the intersection of Goodwin and Montezuma streets in downtown Prescott, AZ. They rang a memorial bell 19 times to honor each of the GMHS at 4:42 p.m., to coincide with the time of their deaths. You will only hear one bell chimes in the short video clip. My humble apologies for the grainy cell phone text copy because that was all I could do at the time; I will change it to a clearer original when on a desktop or PC.
Figure 3. Video of June 30, 2013, fifth anniversary of GMHS memorial service. Source: Joy A. Collura, You Tube
Now it's time to consider the true lessons learned that we have garnered since June 30, 2013.
The Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center (WFLLC) refused to post on their website, one of former USFS Missoula Technology Development Center (MTDC ) psychologist and human factors investigator, Dr. Ted Putnam's paper published in 2011 by the renowned International Association of Wildland Fire (IAWF). The paper titled "Accidents, Accident Guides, Stories and the Truth" was from the Proceedings of 11th International Wildland Fire Safety Summit, April 4-8, 2011, Missoula, Montana, USA; Published by the International Association of Wildland Fire, Missoula, Montana, USA.
Dr. Putnam stated that he had submitted his paper to the WFLLC at least a dozen times without any kind of acknowledgement that they received it and no acknowledgement why they would not publish it. During the Spring of 2018, Fred Schoeffler also submitted Dr. Putnam's paper to the WFLLC three times without any acknowledgement that they received it and no acknowledgement why they would not publish it.
Dr. Putnam is the one who refused to sign the 1994 South Canyon Investigation Report because it was a coverup. His paper is well worth reading to discover the ongoing less than factual, less than truthful, less than forthright fatality fire investigations since the 1949 Mann Gulch Fire where thirteen WFs died.
The "Accidents, Accident Guides, Stories and the Truth" paper details the significant problems with the wildland fire serious accident investigation process.
His paper can be viewed at this link https://independent.academia.edu/DrTedPutnam
Here is the WFLLC Mission Statement: "Our mission is to promote learning in the wildland fire service by providing useful and relevant products and services that help to reveal the complexity and risk in the wildland fire environment."
Furthermore, the WFLLC contains an official USDA USFS WFLLC Disclaimer that states: “Information is Provided with the intent to share knowledge to improve safety, performance, efficiency and organizational learning throughout the entire wildland fire community. No warranty or guarantee is implied because much of the data provided is beyond the control of the center." In other words, this disclaimer basically allows the WFLLC to publish anything and everything that squares with their Mission Statement above.
The official USDA USFS WFLLC website further states:
“Growing to Better Serve This Country’s Wildland Firefighters
"The Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center (LLC) represents a core group of interagency staff members - representing decades of wildland fire experience - who are dedicated to promoting firefighter safety in all wildland fire management activities.
"Since its inception in 2002, the LLC has been growing to better serve this country’s wildland firefighters, helping promote a culture of safe and effective wildland firefighter work practices and improving wildland firefighters’ learning and training networks to further enhance their knowledge and skills. Besides making personal contacts at meetings, conferences, workshops, seminars, and wildfire academies throughout the United States, the LLC provides a popular website for wildland firefighters: ( http://www.wildfirelessons.net )
"This site introduces and links you to a wide array of wildland firefighter-based useful and relevant information. Another important facet on this home page is our “Connected Communities” function that we provide for your wildland fire-linked “communities” - please feel free to create one! - as well as incident management teams.”
There are numerous testimonials posted to their Community Rules & Etiquette and Privacy Guidelines, by all levels of wildland firefighters and supervisors speaking to what they believed is an honest, integrity driven process of accepting and posting relevant WFLLC materials pursuant to those very same Community Rules & Etiquette and Privacy Guidelines. If only they knew that they were getting much less than they thought. What lessons learned will they garner once they find out?
"Reply to Woodsman post on June 29, 2018 at 6:38 pm
" ... FWIW… here’s a little ‘insight’ into the actual ‘decision making’ process ( or lack thereof ) up at the infamous Lessons Learned Center. The following is a copy of an email that Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center ( WFLLC ) DIRECTOR Brit Rosso sent to one of his BOSSES at the National Park Service by the name of Christina ( Tina ) Boehle…
"Christina ( Tina ) Boehle National Park Service Acting Branch Chief, Communication and Education Division of Fire and Aviation 3833 South Development Ave. Boise, ID 83705 208.387.5875
"Rosso was giving ‘Tina’ a copy of a response email that he had just sent back to a lawyer who was researching ( among other things ) the Yarnell Hill Fire and had emailed Rosso and asked him TWO simple questions…
"1. Who decides what materials merit being posted for download on the wildfirelessons.net website?
"2. Do YOU ( Brit Rosso ) really work for the National Park Service?
"Brit Ross ‘replied’ to this lawyer and basically said that HE has the FINAL SAY about what gets ‘posted’ at the WFLLC… and he also said there are (quote) “no hard and fast rules for what warrants posting” ( end quote ).
He makes NO MENTION of the WFLLC’s actual MISSION STATEMENT.
He basically admits it all comes down to whether HE thinks anything is ‘relevant’ to the safety of wildland firefighters… or NOT.
He also verified that he DOES, in fact, ‘work’ for the National Park Service.
Here is Brit Rosso’s actual response email back to the lawyer…
—————————————————————————————————– "From: Rosso, Brit ( brit_rosso (at) nps.gov ) Date: Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 3:36 PM Subject: Re: Two questions for Mr. Rosso ….
"Sorry for the slow response.
"It is a very busy time of year for us here at the LLC. "So I will try to answer your two questions;
"1 – my LLC team decides what materials merit posting to our web site. "I have the final say as the Director, but we have no hard and fast “rules” for what warrants posting. The diversity of the products sent to us is just too complex to build hard and fast rules.
"2 – I do work for the NPS, but the LLC works for the entire wildland fire community. "We were born out of the loss of 14 firefighters on the 1994 South Canyon fire. "We lost a total of 34 firefighters that tragic summer. By design we are the “ombudsman” "or 3rd party voice for the wildland fire service.
"I hope this helps you in your continued efforts. all the best.
"Brit Rosso – Director" (emphasis added and quotation marks added) Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center Work (520) 799-8760 Cell (559) 827-7607 www wildfirelessons.net"
"Brit Ross ( DIRECTOR of the WFLLC ) said… “By design we are the “ombudsman” or 3rd party voice for the wildland fire service.”
So back to our original question: "What Lessons Have We Really Learned About The June 30, 2013, Yarnell Hill Fire?"
We have learned that the SAIT-SAIR "... found no indication of negligence, reckless actions, or violations of policy or protocol." (emphasis added) (SAIT-SAIR page 4) In other words, the IMTs and the GMHS did everything right, yet 19 men died in one fell swoop.
That the SAIT "... recommends that the State of Arizona request the NWCG and/or Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC) to charter a team of interagency wildland fire and human factors experts to conduct further analysis of this event and the wildland fire communications environment."(emphasis added) (SAIT-SAIR Recommendation 5. on page 44)
To date, as far as I am aware, no such "team of interagency wildland fire and human factors experts to conduct further analysis of this event" has ever been chartered to look into the human factors that contributed to the (in)actions of the IMTs and the deaths of the GMHS.
Instead the SAIT-SAIR posits: "Some Questions for Researchers in Human Factors, Organizations, Fire Behavior, etc." (emphasis added) which leaves you - the WFs and Supervisors to come to your own conclusions regarding the human factors. These were the alleged "investigators" and it's their job to investigate, and to determine conclusions, and make recommendations.
One of the latest accident investigation process is the "Coordinated Response Protocol and Learning Review" (I call it CRaP) for serious accidents link
You can also go to the Wildfire Today (WFT) article
( http://wildfiretoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/WP-Coordinated-Response-Protocol-Paper.001.pdf )
Within the WFT article you will find this quote in the CRaP paper:
“Actions and decisions are consequences, not causes. The goal is to understand why actions or decisions made sense to those involved at the time. Conditions shape decisions and actions, revealing these conditions will aid the agency and agency personnel in understanding how to recognize, change and react to conditional pressures.”
ACTIONS AND DECISIONS ARE CONSEQUENCES, NOT CAUSES. Really? I thought that “actions” based on “decisions,” actually “caused” or resulted in consequences, whether good or bad.
Part of what this comes to is that if a decision is not caused, there is no standard explanation of it and if maybe there is no explanation of it – what other kind of explanation of events is there but a standard causal one?
The CRaP quote sounds a lot like the notion of DETERMINISM. Determinism is the doctrine that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to the will.
It looks like the CRaP implies that individual human beings have NO FREE WILL and CANNOT BE HELD MORALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS. And here lies the rub. Where are the Lessons Learned if nobody is ever going to be found to have made any bad decisions that resulted in (OMG) mistakes (e.g. wildland fire burnovers and/or fatalities)?
Consider another version, called the "Learning Review." This is from the Saddleback Fire Learning Review, a hazard tree fatality.
“There were a variety of different factors and pressures influencing actions/decisions [Footnote] 9
During the Saddleback incident, which are likely present in many organizations, or work environments …”
“[Footnote] 9 There were occasions in the Review where the difference between actions and decisions could not be separated, thus the term action/decision was used, as it could have been either one, or a combination of both” (emphasis added)
A quick review of the definitions of these two separate and distinct words reveals that "Action" is the fact or process of doing something, typically to achieve an aim. And a "Decision" is a conclusion or resolution reached after consideration or he action or process of deciding something or of resolving a question.
These and the YH Fire SAIT-SAIR conclusions are fairly clear examples of George Orwell's (1984) Doublespeak, (i.e. love is hate, ignorance is strength) Worst of all this is Orwellian Doublethink, where one can grasp onto two opposing thoughts as being true at the same time. This insidious Doublethink has fairly thoroughly infected the higher echelons of wildland fire management.
So then, what lessons have we really learned about the June 30, 2013, Yarnell Hill Fire?
Answering this question in June 2021 after posting it in 2018 reveals many things that are manifested in all the various YHFR posts above. In no particular order, they are:
1) Classic wildland fire mishap cover-up in the form of first establishing a "conclusion" and then finding alleged "facts" to support it;
2) Mysteriously missing data and public records in all forms enumerated below;
3) Several separate firing operations along the Sesame Street and Shrine Corridor and associated spur road areas based on separate and distinct smoke columns (plumes);
4) The USFS refusal to release the Aerial Firefighting Utilization and Effectiveness (AFUE) records of June 30, 2013, aircraft and air-to-ground radio transmission records;
5) The US Forest Service utilizing the Touhy Principle and the 61-word Federal Housekeeping statute to keep their employees from being interviewed by investigators while allowing BLM employees to be interviewed;
6) Numerous GMHS GPS units in YCSO storage for one year after June 30, 2013, and then released to the public without memory cards;
7) FFs from local Fire Depts giving SAIT members cell phone memory cards of firing operations, never to be seen again;
8) Mackenzie video altered and edited to remove at least 30 seconds of key audio;
9) Federal funding by the USFS for the AZ State Forestry YH Fire and GMHS investigation;
10) The SAIT was more like a "Learning Review" and not an investigation;
11) The AZ State Forestry ignoring SAIT recommendation to put together a panel of experts looking into human factors;
12) WantsToKnowTheTruth's (WTKTT) amazing analytic work with his YouTube channel on Cross-Fade videos with Google Earth overlays indicating where various fire personnel are relative to the fire perimeter;
13) WantsToKnowTheTruth's (WTKTT) amazing analytic work with GMHS cell phone and camea videos;
14) YH Fire IMT Musser was working for the AZ Attorney General's Office toward building a defense case against the wrongful death lawsuits;
15) On June 30, 2014 at 1851 (6:51 PM), Musser inquired for the AZ Attorney General's Office to SAIT Co-Team Leader Mike Dudley whether there were any working GMHS GPS units checked for track logs or way points and what base map they used:
16) On July 1, 2014, at 0821 (8:21 AM) SAIT Co-Team Leader Dudley responded to Musser "we did not have any GPS records available or recoverable from the GMIHC ..."
There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing. Proverbs 27:12
Update: minor spelling, punctuation, and grammar corrections; captions corrected to one inch spacing; select bolding and emphasis throughout post; added sixteen (16) "lessons learned from the June 30, 2013, YH Fire" (June 28, 2021 at 10:00 PM)
webmaster reviewed page last: 7-19-18 1:45pm
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(Blog Was On Pause since 1-27-21- Glad blog was on pause - there was missing content and it was all moved around and broken links.) (JC)
#wildlandfire #Yarnellfire #GraniteMountainHotShot # Granite Mountain Hot Shot Learning and Tribute Center (GMHS LTC) in Prescott Gateway Mall in Prescott, Arizona #Katie Cornelius #Ered Matthews #GMHS LTC Project Volunteer Dennis Bueschel #AC/DC "Back in Black" #GMHS memorial bell remembrance ceremony #Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center (WFLLC) #USFS Missoula Technology Development Center (MTDC ) psychologist and human factors investigator, Dr. Ted Putnam #wildfiretoday #International Association of Wildland Fire (IAWF) #Accidents, Accident Guides, Stories and the Truth" was from the Proceedings of 11th International Wildland Fire Safety Summit, April 4-8, 2011, Missoula, Montana, USA #Fred Schoeffler #WantsToKnowTheTruth #Woodsman #Christina ( Tina ) Boehle National Park Service Acting Branch Chief, Communication and Education Division of Fire and Aviation #Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center ( WFLLC ) DIRECTOR Brit Rosso #NWCG and/or Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC) #SAIT-SAIR #Coordinated Response Protocol and Learning Review" (I call it CRaP) (hashtags)
Post Number Four
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If you right click and click "print" and save as PDF- 16 pages.
Update October 19th, 2021, 2:13pm- Fred J. Schoeffler has my full permission to use any and all content from "What Lessons Have We Really Learned About The June 30, 2013, Yarnell Hill Fire?" on his new "Project 10 and 18 United" / "Project 10 and 18 International" blog he is creating.- Joy A. Collura
6-26-22 3:21pm Update: Home | Project 10 & 18 (project10n18.org)
Post Number One: Did the late afternoon, June 30, 2013, Sesame Street and The Shrine fire behavior/smoke plumes influ (yarnellhillfirerevelations.com)
Post Number Two: Are These Possible Indications of YH Fire Burnout Ops In The Peeples Valley Area On June 30, 2013? (yarnellhillfirerevelations.com)
Post Number Three:InvestigativeMEDIA Five (5) Years Later (yarnellhillfirerevelations.com)
Post Number Five: Another Big Question Arises ... (yarnellhillfirerevelations.com)
9-21-23 6:43pm:
