It's worse than that. The manner in which the USFS is forced to manage the forest often destroys the watershed for the fish. The system is broken. It serves corrupt interests. There IS an alternative.

We have seen in stark reality that left wing agendas can kill innocent people in two terrible/horrible scenes in 2001"

First of the agendas of the Enviral Green Nazis re forest management, closure of roads and pure evil agendas resulted in the death of these 4 innocent fire fighters!

Then on 9/11 close to 6,000 Americans and guests were mass murdered due to the agenda of the left wing to disable our CIA, FBI and to receive donations from the leaders of the Arab mass killers like Hilldebeast did in 2000!

Left wing agendas will and can kill us!

Thank you for this thread!

Pinging a few friends...

TOTALLY RIDICULOUS>....the firefighters who were responsible for the fellow employees should be held responsible for their negligence. They had no reason to NOT get water and save their co-workers lives and they are trying to blame a law!! See the bold text in the article!! NICE TRY!!

WASHINGTON (AP) Confusion about whether the Endangered Species Act allowed water to be taken from a river delayed a water drop on a wildfire that killed four firefighters. The amount was relatively small and did not lead to the deaths.

The Forest Service's report is due out Wednesday on last summer's deaths in the north-central Cascade Mountains of Washington state. Sources with knowledge of the investigation said there was a delay of almost two hours as Forest Service personnel sought guidance about whether the Fish and Wildlife Service needed to give permission to get water from the Chewuch River, home to several endangered fish.

Later in the day, the fire intensified and a mop-up crew was trapped. Firefighters Tom Craven, 30; Devin Weaver, 21; Jessica Johnson, 19; and Karen FitzPatrick, 18, all died.

The Forest Service would not comment on the investigation until its report is released.

The sources said a helicopter with its 75-gallon bucket could have provided firefighters at most 600 to 900 gallons of water an hour. Two water pumps that were expected to deliver up to 7,200 gallons of water an hour also failed to deliver their full capacity.

The primary source of water was supposed to be those pumps, a point that will be made in the final report, one of the sources said.

Rep. Scott McInnis, R-Colo., chairman of the House Resources forests subcommittee, first alleged that a delay related to the Endangered Species Act may have contributed to the deaths. He raised the issue at a hearing on the fire three weeks after the deaths occurred.

"We are still sorting through the maze," Josh Penry, McInnis' staff director for the subcommittee, said Monday. "Clearly there was some confusion."

Depending on the investigation's outcome, Penry said Congress may need to amend the act to clarify that human life comes before endangered species.

The Endangered Species Act doesn't specifically address firefighter safety. A 1995 directive from the Fish and Wildlife Service, which enforces the act, makes clear life and property come first.

The directive says: "FIREFIGHTER SAFETY COMES FIRST ON EVERY FIRE, EVERY TIME. ... NEVER delay the measures needed to protect the lives of fire crews waiting for (endangered species) consultation."

The directive came after safety problems contributed to the deaths of 14 firefighters near Glenwood Springs, Colo., in 1994.

Chris Wood, a top aide to the Forest Service chief during the Clinton administration, said the directive couldn't be clearer.

"At best, laying the blame for this tragedy on efforts to protect endangered species is a misreading of the law, and at worst it's a calculated effort to politicize a tragedy," said Wood, now the watershed programs director at Trout Unlimited.

The National Marine Fisheries Service, which also is charged with endangered species protection, is stepping up education for its employees, spokesman Brian Gorman said.

"There are folks who would like nothing better than to find that the Endangered Species Act is causing problems that it, in fact, is not," Gorman said.

On the Net:

National Interagency Fire Center: http://www.nifc.gov/

Copyright 2001 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Thanks.

Weasel words; a mere out for a complicit agency because it ignored decision-making time, irreversible processes, and relative risk while it worked through a bureaucratic process that feeds the agency budget. The agency certainly didn't order them to die. It certainly created and abetted the circumstances under which such deaths were inevitable in service to the interests of agency managers. The process followed exactly the fire policy written by the Sierra Club after the Yellowstone Fire. To even wait to condsider the balance of risks under those circumstances gives the fire time to progress until there is no way out for the firefighter, the rancher, or the trapped animal. Fish were indeed placed before people or anything else for that matter including silvicultural or general riparian health. The predispositions of the Precautionary Principle in service to the Endangered status of the trout created the inevitable disaster because it is a policy incapable of weighing relative risk, destructive to its purpose.

Mr. Gorman will never blame the agency's craven and destructive use of the ESA because it is his gravy train. Agency action has been on balance destructive to the fish, to say nothing of the forest and the landowners and workers who have loved them for generations.

Flame away.

Nah...it was the firemans negligence for not putting the lives of their fellows workers before their FEAR of any repercussions of a law that they 'ignorantly' misunderstood and used as an excuse. THey were ignorant of the law and negligent of their dutires to protect lives.

IF I knew that my neighbor could sue me for entering their house for water when my CAT was going to die if I didn't get any water right now.....I wouldn't hesitate to break the law...enter that house to save my CATS life. I would pay later...save my cats life now. Would you not break the law to save a life? I would not think twice. I'd serve the time.

A 1995 directive from the Fish and Wildlife Service, which enforces the act, makes clear life and property come first.

Tell that to the Klamath farmers.

Thanks for the ping.

I have fought forest fires, but that was over 35 years ago. At that time we had lookouts and never let fires get out of hand like they are now. Further more, the old-time rangers and fire bosses understood fires because most of them grew up in forests. The people running the forests now are generally college educated and are city boys who whould know a pulaski from a shove.

Those people died because of neglence by the firebosses in charge. They put them in a place where they had no chance of stopping the fire, even under the best of conditions. One of the excuses was that the humidity dropped and the fire crowned. Well, it was 90° F. in the afternoon. What do you think the humidity would do?

indexing

How many Klamath farmers have died so far?

While I was there a farmers wife called a radio station and told the story of how her husband committed suicide over the water shortage. There may be more. And it's not over yet.

Tell it to the people of Los Alamos. Tell it to the people of Lewiston. Tell it to the people of Montana. Seven million acres in one year, much of it now over-run with weeds. It was predicted. Some anticipated it. Some wanted it and for FINANCIAL reasons. Congratulations Sungirl, your ilk has helped set those forests back 100 years, if they ever recover after exotic infestation.

You know as well as I do that these forests are in disastrous condition and don't tell me that it will all get better with a match. While there are places that could benefit from a mosaic burn, they are few given the predominance of overstocked conditions. The reasons for that situation are political, originating largely in the Roosevelt Administration and horrible exacerbated by Al Gore.

This is not just my opinion. My work has been reviewed by people on the ground as both foresters and fire fighters, forest policy makers, a former USFS Assistant Chief, silviculturalists, certified forest landowners, fisheries biologists, in short, the entire vertically integrated structure of forest management.

The entire structure of forest management in this country is overlaid with a heavy influence of deep ecology. It starts as high as the UN and permeates to brainwashed urban kids now serving as USFS personnel. Not a few of these people value fish as highly as any human being, some consider fish of superior value to humans. That structure is aided and abetted by an infusion of leftist sociologists into university ag, forestry, and "environmental studies" departments. They live and breathe off grant money, much of it from tax-exempt "non-profit" foundations whose parent corporations directly benefit from constrained access to resources: the Bill DuVall's of this world. I have heard and heard their witlessly fascist rantings myself and seen it echoed by paid "activists" that were bussed in at numerous Board of Forestry meetings. They don't even bother to memorize the speeches, though it is tragically comic to see them read them with difficulty. I have read the ads for tree sitters. I have seen such attitudes reflected in written policies, to the highest levels, including treaty law. I have documented the fraudulent process by which the primary treaty underlying the ESA was adopted. It is about to blow up in their faces.

Under the scrutiny of such a vertically integrated political hegemony, there is no way a fire boss is left to operate by sheerly technical judgement, even if that were his or her propensity. To cite the existence of a rule or procedure to the contrary, presupposes that such contradictory policies and procedures (serving as little more than butt covering) aren't rife throughout the Federal and State bureaucracies. If you know anything at all about resource agencies, then you know that. Thus your "blame the employee" tactic taken in a case of management failure (as any such tragedy is properly regarded) is beyond cynical. This tragedy was the product of the emphases of the organization: acquisition before maintenance, enforcement skills before technical professionalism, and flippant blame of underlings and "insufficient funding" substituted for management accountability.

You are high, stoned or stupid, or a more crippling combination.

"There was confusion." "There was confusion." "There was confusion."

Got that?

Overburdensome Enviromental laws micromanaging the good senses of Forestry employees aggrivated this problem into death.

It's so nice of you to supply the quotes to hang you.

They live and breathe off grant money, much of it from tax-exempt "non-profit" foundations

Government Grants Support Greens in ANWR Debate (Your tax $$ at work)

You had me on my feet cheering.
Did I ever mention that my father retired from the Forest Service. He couldn't stand what was happening to an organization he believed in. It's the main reason he retired.
He's a Democrat as well though I consider him a blue dog.