#6 - Lead Investigator
When I accepted the role of Lead Investigator of the Yarnell Hill Fire, I knew it would be a difficult job. And it did turn out to be the toughest thing I’ve done professionally.
What made it worthwhile to me was I knew that the fire service would learn and improve from this accident. I knew that based on our history.
Our last major double digit fatality in wildland firefighting was The South Canyon Fire in 1994 (14 lost, Colorado). It led to a golden age of innovation and breakthroughs in Human Factors, Leadership Development, Learning Culture, and Accident Investigation Reform.
Before that was the 1966 Loop Fire (12 lost, Los Angeles County), which led to major advancements with radios, equipment and protective gear, and it was the precursor to the Incident Command System (ICS) and other massive efforts at interagency coordination. [1]
We can go all the way through history but the pattern is the same: big accidents led to big breakthroughs and years of innovation.
The Yarnell Hill Fire was the accident of our time. I saw our investigation as the first step in a big learning process, and I knew that in the long run firefighters would be better off for it.
This was my way to honor the fallen. What they went through was a nightmare. And so that’s why I resolved to do all I could in that investigation so other firefighters and leaders could avoid repeating it.
So it was a great honor to me to be asked to serve as lead investigator. It felt like an opportunity to do something really meaningful—not only for wildland firefighters and the hotshot community that had been so good to me, but for the whole American Fire Service. I threw myself into the mission.
After the investigation, it was like passing the baton. I moved on to other fires, other investigations, other projects.
But in the years following the accident, the major breakthroughs never came. So I decided to take up the mission of learning from this tragedy once again, this time with a new approach.
[1] The 1970 Southern California Fire Siege is seen as the trigger for the development of the Incident Command System (ICS). That’s true, but the 1966 Loop Fire was an important precursor—it happened in the same area, involved the same agencies and the same problems.