PLACERVILLE, CALIF. (InEDC) CBS13, July 27, 2023
The Caldor Fire burned more than 221, 000 acres and ripped through the town of Grizzly Flats in less than 15 minutes back in August 2021. A lawsuit claims the U.S. Forest Service failed to protect the town.
“They had a computerized fire model that showed if a fire ever started in the middle fork of the Consumnes River drainage, it would pretty much wipe out our community within 24 hours,” said Almer.
Mark Almer has served as the fire council’s chairperson for the majority of time since its formation in 2004.
“We have been executing and implementing a few projects in the area, including the Trestle Project,” said Eldorado National Forest District Ranger Scot Rogers.
The Trestle Project aimed to reduce fire fuel and fire threat to over 16,000 acres around Grizzly Flats. But on Aug. 14, 2021 – a fire started exactly where the Forest Service predicted.
Ingram has put his decades of firefighting expertise to work since the Caldor Fire, investigating what exactly happened in the nights leading up to Grizzly burning.
“When you look at an accident that occurs on an incident like this, it’s a lot of pieces that build up into that final result,” said Ingram. “That final result was the town of Grizzly Flats getting destroyed.”
Grizzly Flats residents and elected leaders said they believe Grizzly burned because of a series of mismanaged steps by the U.S. Forest Service leadership.
The U.S. Forest Service disagrees.
“We sent every resource we could to (the) initial attack,” said Rogers. “We had direct attack, we initiated direct attack – full suppression just like we had done all year.”
But in his own digging, Ingram discovered a number of failures by the U.S. Forest Service’s leadership, including miscommunication and fire crews being sent down washed-out roads that should have been maintained by the U.S. Forest Service, causing long delays to get to the fire.
“If you’re responsible for that forest, you should know what roads are open, what roads are closed, where the washouts are,” said Ingram.
The U.S. Forest Service should especially know this area because of their own studies done for the Trestle Project, Ingram said.
“That is not acceptable,” said Ingram. “You cannot spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a fuel study and then ignore it when the fire occurs.”
We brought our findings and recordings to the U.S. Forest Service and asked them why these forest roads were not maintained by their agency, as it’s their responsibility.
“We have thousands of roads on the Eldorado National Forest and the maintenance of those roads is a challenge,” said Rogers. “We don’t have all the funding we need to maintain all the roads to the highest standard.”
But when it came to fighting the fire, Ingram said as it grew out of control, management released crews.
“They just went home. I couldn’t believe it,” said Ingram.
