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Trump's billionaire Forest Service chief faces scrutiny over wildfire response near his Idaho home. {Washington Post 14 August}https://wapo.st/4wZEqPD
Whilst wildfire crews were already stretched dangerously thin across the American West, one politically connected billionaire reportedly saw fit to demand additional public resources for a fire threatening his own lavish estate. The consequences might well have proved far graver, yet let history nonetheless record Michael Boren as an entitled little s**tbag. By what qualifications doth a ‘tech billionaire’ merit oversight of the United States Forest Service in the first place?
FTA: Undersecretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and Environment Michael Boren, who oversees the U.S. Forest Service, asked agency staff last month to escalate the amount of aircraft at a seven-acre fire that had started near his mega-ranch in Idaho’s Sawtooth National Forest, according to two Forest Service officials familiar with the matter.
Boren, a tech billionaire and Trump appointee, oversees about 200 million acres of national forest and public land. He also owns thousands of acres in Idaho, including the 480-acre Hell Roaring Ranch situated within the Sawtooth National Recreation Area. And before his current role, Boren has clashed with the Forest Service numerous times over the years.
On July 12, what began as an unattended campfire grew into the Cabin Creek Fire, which spread to a few acres on a ridge in the Sawtooth Forest. While at his ranch, Boren called Forest Service officials in the Sawtooth Forest at the regional level and national operations in Washington multiple times to question why there weren’t more aircraft battling the fire, according to one Forest Service official with knowledge of the situation. This official, who like several others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation, said Boren asked when more assets would arrive. Two other agency officials said he called those offices, including at least once in the middle of the night.
Six current and former Forest Service officials said the response was greater than what is typical for a fire of that scale that did not pose a significant threat to life or property.
In those calls, according to the Forest Service official with knowledge of the situation, Boren pushed for more aircraft to fight the fire even though “it was easily accessible by ground,” the official said.
He “was on the phone calling people that day asking why there weren’t more resources on the fire and when there was going to be more,” the official said.
Communications reviewed by The Washington Post sent during the response to the blaze corroborate that Boren personally asked Forest Service staff about the Cabin Creek Fire.
In total, about nine aircraft, including helicopters, air tankers and tactical planes, responded to the blaze on July 12, according to a Post analysis of flight paths, part of an effort that lasted a few hours and cost nearly $115,000 in federal money. The Post analysis found these assets traveled from across the West to Idaho’s Alturas Lake, near where the Cabin Creek Fire was burning. At least some of the aircraft were diverted from efforts to contain fires elsewhere in the state, according to two agency officials and the Post analysis of the flight paths.
In a statement, Agriculture Department spokesman Michael Abboud said that in his position, “Boren is expected to have regular contact with the agencies he oversees. The fact that a senior government official would be monitoring and communicating with other government officials about an event he oversees is a non-story.”
Abboud said Boren called national fire officials “to report a fire that was near property he owns, just as one would hope any citizen in an area under threats from wildfires would do. However, at no point did he pressure leadership or order more resources to fight this or any other fire.”
An official with knowledge of the calls described the interactions as Boren “putting pressure on [staff] to throw more resources at” the fire.
The Post could not independently confirm the precise times Boren made calls about the fire. Staff at the Sawtooth National Forest said The Post could file a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain that information.
It is not out of the ordinary for government officials or lawmakers to flag the proximity of their land to wildfires, said three current and former Forest Service staffers. But the staffers said it is unusual for an undersecretary to try to influence firefighting operations because high-level appointees often don’t have the full picture of what is needed for a given incident and region. Boren’s requests could have undercut a national firefighting system that works to ensure resources are allocated where they are needed most, four former federal fire officials said, at a time when federal crews have been stretched thin battling wildfires across the West.
The Trump administration has endorsed a full suppression strategy — where crews aim to speedily put out most fires after they erupt — but decisions about allocating resources are typically left to fire officials in charge.
“Right now there is a lot going on in the West. These priorities are set and there are things that come into the mix when looking at resource allocation,” said Steve Ellis, who served as deputy director of the Bureau of Land Management and spent a decade working in the Forest Service. “There’s a finite number of resources. So if you are going to put more resources on one incident, they have to be shifted from somewhere else.”
Officials from the local sheriff’s office and the Forest Service said they were notified about the fire through several alert systems shortly after 1 p.m. on July 12. An hour after initial warnings, one additional air tanker was dispatched, logs show.
By 4:45 p.m., the agency had a much more robust response.
On July 12, the day the fire started, the nation’s fire preparedness level was at a 4 out of 5, meaning that multiple major wildfires were burning around the country and the majority of specialized crews were in the field.
Three days later it rose to the highest level at the earliest time in the year that the United States has reached that rating in 10 years.
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