Fire Safety Rules

Lessons of Thirtymile Fire Safety must come first

The 10th anniversary of the Thirtymile Fire has come and gone, and the debate still remains about whether the U.S. Forest Service truly comprehends the lessons of the four young lives that were lost.

The Forest Service's initial resistance to responsibility prompted U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell to chair a special congressional hearing into the agency and its safety practices after the Okanogan County fire, which on July 10, 2001, claimed the lives of four Central Washington firefighters:

* Tom Craven, 30, of Ellensburg.

* Karen FitzPatrick, 18, of Yakima.

* Jessica Johnson, 19, of Yakima.

* Devin Weaver, 21, of Yakima.

An investigation by the Yakima Herald-Republic found the Forest Service failed to follow many of its own safety rules. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration determined 20 of the agency's 28 fire-safety rules were violated. They included a lack of escape routes, incomplete weather forecasts, insufficient instructions and no posted fire lookouts.

Back in the months after the fire, Sen. Cantwell feared a "cultural disconnect" that congressional action wouldn't necessarily change. And Congress did act, requiring the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Forest Service's parent agency, to investigate fire fatalities instead of the Forest Service.

The Forest Service says its culture indeed has changed, and that it is stressing safety in the wake of Thirtymile. Tom Harbour, the agency's director of fire and aviation in Washington, D.C., says the Forest Service now emphasizes teaching firefighters how to think more critically, to be more active in assessing danger and to be willing to back away, and that lives should not be sacrificed for the sake of property. Ted Craven, a firefighter and brother of Thirtymile victim Tom Craven, says the Forest Service indeed is paying more attention to safety.

And yet, the agency has seemed at best a reluctant participant in cultural change. Two fatal fires since then carried the eerie echoes of Thirtymile: the 2003 Cramer Fire in Idaho in which two died, and the 2006 Esperanza Fire in California that killed an entire crew of five.

The commander in the Cramer incident agreed to leave the Forest Service in exchange for avoiding prosecution; in that fire, the crew had no escape route. In the Esperanza fire, the Department of Agriculture's inspector general found no criminal liability in the deaths, which occurred when a fire overran the five before they could deploy their emergency shelters. The crew tried to protect a home that had been declared tactically indefensible, but that information never reached the crew. The investigation blamed fire behavior and a map of indefensible locations that had not been prepared by qualified personnel.

Seattle Moving Toward Rules for Marijuana Shops | Cannabis News ...

At a packed meeting at the Cannabis Defense Coalition’s Sodo headquarters last month, Seattle defense attorney Aaron Pelley told the gathered dispensary owners and marijuana growers how that could happen. The new law suggests that, by rotating several of the 10 patient memberships in each garden, medical-marijuana operations would be able to have large customer bases, Pelley said. In Kent, police served search warrants, seizing patient records and marijuana, at four dispensaries less than 24 hours after the City Council passed an emergency moratorium last week. Jay Berneburg, an attorney for several Kent dispensaries, said such “heavy-handed” actions are likely to cluster marijuana business “in civilized cities like Seattle and Tacoma.” Federal prosecutors have taken an increasingly belligerent approach in the 15 states that authorize medical marijuana. A June 29 memo from the U.S. Justice Department reiterated that local U.S. Attorneys have discretion to press cases in their jurisdictions, and that “state laws or local ordinances are not a defense to civil or criminal enforcement of federal law.” Over the next several months, Seattle will consider further regulation, including possible zoning restrictions that could channel collective gardens — particularly larger-scale, multigarden operations — into commercial or industrial zones, Clark said. Staff was researching current zoning rules for gardens, farms and pharmacies to see where medical-marijuana operations would fit.

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