And it-it should never have happened," Ingram said. Ingram told 60 Minutes that breaks every rule of firefighting. Yet that same day, the Forest Service dismissed some half-dozen state Cal Fire engines and crews, letting most of them go before their replacements arrived. Their own fire model for August 15, also obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, showed Grizzly Flats in the middle of the area almost certain to burn-an 80-100% chance-if the fire wasn't put out.
"I think everybody on that hill that night figured that if we didn't get ahead of this thing that night, we were going to be in trouble." It-it's just that simple," the firefighter said.
"What in the world's going on here? I mean, like what the hell? We have a fire. "So when you heard the incident commander say he was pulling out, and other equipment, fire engines and bulldozers left with him, what did you think?" Whitaker asked the firefighter. No one would go on camera for fear of losing their jobs, so 60 Minutes agreed to conceal this firefighter's identity. They also said they were trained to fight wildfires 24/7 until the fire is out. A number of them told 60 Minutes that they believed that night was their best chance to contain the fire. The order to pull out didn't sit well with state and local firefighters who'd raced in to help the Forest Service. "Firefighting is dangerous but you don't call 9-1-1 when you're a firefighter. I couldn't believe it at first," Ingram said. "But yet this Forest Service incident commander was ordering people to stop," Whitaker said. That was the best time to do it," Ingram told Whitaker. "When I worked for other agencies, we typically fought fires at night. The Forest Service said it was unsafe to continue and it wanted to reassess. "Will be pulling everyone off the line for accountability" reads the dispatch log, a minute-by-minute account of the fire that 60 Minutes obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. At 1:43 a.m., just hours into the fire, the Forest Service shut down operations for the night. Ingram said one of the most consequential decisions came in the early hours of August 15, when the fire was still small. Forest Service mismanagement fueled California's Caldor Fire And then, they failed to protect the community of Grizzly Flats when they knew it was headed that way." Then they failed to bring in enough equipment and resources to mitigate that fire. "They failed to understand where the fire was going to go. "You flat out say it's a failure of leadership?" Whitaker asked. "The leadership failed to give the team on the ground what they needed to do to put that fire out in a timely manner," Ingram told Whitaker. Forest Service management team bears much of the blame. Ingram investigated the initial spread of the fire for the local fire district and he told us he believes the U.S. Forest Service and for Cal Fire, California's state firefighting agency. Ingram fought fires for 35 years for BOTH the U.S. Retired fire captain Grant Ingram was also listening to his scanner.
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