DNRC responds to complaints about East Fork Fire

A lack of resources, poor communications, complex terrain and the sheer scope of the fire led to complications in the East Fork Fire response that some may have seen as failure, East Fork Fire Incident Commander Don Pyrah said Friday.

“This is not a normal fire,” Pyrah said. “A normal fire here is several acres, it’s easy to put out and (people) go back to their lives. That is not what occurred here.”

Pyrah’s comments came after a public meeting Thursday night in Montana State University-Northern’s Hensler Auditorium where several ranchers and volunteers criticized the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation’s handling of the response.

Detailed in an article in Friday’s edition of the Havre Daily News, people at the meeting criticized the DNRC for pulling people off the frontlines, scheduling meetings at times when they said people should have been on the frontlines and poor communications.

Pyrah said Friday he was not notified about the meeting until 10 a.m. Thursday. He said he was unable to attend and respond to people’s concerns and complaints at the meeting because he had previous commitments that evening to help firefighters and owners of eligible equipment used in the fire to fill out paperwork for reimbursement by the DNRC.

He said he expects the counties to bring him back to hold a meeting about the fire.

Pyrah said volunteers, local farmers and ranchers, and volunteer firefighters staffed engines every night until earlier last week. At that point, Incident Command sent local volunteers home and maintained a night shift. The night shift was maintained until last Thursday night.

One volunteer at the meeting said that at one point he had a water truck behind him as he was fighting the fire, but the truck was ordered to pull out.

Pyrah said he could not respond specifically to that incident but resources were scattered around the area where the fire was burning as needed or perceived as needed, and some people might not have known resources were being sent to another area.

The fire, Pyrah said, was a “rapidly expanding event,” a situation that grew at such a fast pace it was difficult for command to be established and maintained.

“This is off-the-charts extreme,” Pyrah said. “This is some place we haven’t been in a long time.”

He added that the fire, which was first reported the afternoon of Sunday, Aug. 27, went from 1,000 acres Aug. 30 to 13,000 acres less than 24 hours later.

The fire was listed as 100 percent contained Saturday at 21,896 acres

People at the meeting also complained that fire teams were called to meetings at times when it would have been more productive to be on the front lines putting out the fire,

One person at the meeting said that instead of holding a meeting at 7 a.m. and then heading out to fight the fire at 10 a.m., meetings should have been called at 4 a.m. so crews could be actively fighting the fires earlier in the morning, when conditions were better.

Pyrah said meetings were held at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. because such times seemed like a logical place to break the day. With firefighters fighting the blaze round-the-clock, he said, any time would be a problem for some firefighters.

The meetings, he said, were used as a time when firefighters would eat their meals, get their operational briefing and be assigned their tasks for the day or night.

He said food could not be delivered to the incident command site until 6:30 a.m. and if food was delivered earlier, meetings could have begun earlier.

Many of the complaints from people at the meeting were related to poor communications. Pyrah said the situation was made worse by several factors including a scarcity of resources, caused by an unusually active fire season in Montana and throughout the northwestern U.S.

Roughly 90 percent of the manpower and equipment used to combat the fire was provided by local volunteers.

Pyrah said incident command requested personnel to perform several functions including public information. Only two of the positions were filled.

He said not having a public information officer who could communicate with the media, and with the public on social media and generate information as needed was a major problem including being unable to counter misinformation that was circulating.

“We didn’t have the people,” Pyrah said. “This is the thing that is clearly misunderstood and that I am trying to have people understand, that we asked for this help and there was nothing available for help except the folks we had engaged on the ground, the tribe, the counties, the volunteer firefighters and local ranchers.”

He said having an information officer could have helped with both communication and to prevent misunderstanding, “so things like this don’t happen.”

Communication was made more difficult by the terrain where the fire burned, Pyrah added. He said personnel often had to go to remote locations where radio and cellphone service was unavailable.

Many difficulties arose, Pyrah said, because of that lack of service.

He said the digital relay equipment that had been set up by Hill County helped, but personnel still experienced problems with dropped cellphone calls and delays in receiving text messages or voicemails.

Triangle Communications providing Cells on Wheels or COWS did help with the problem, Pyrah said.

Pyrah also praised the volunteers and community for how they stepped up to help put out the fire. He said that without the help of volunteer fire departments, local fire departments, ranchers and the Chippewa Cree Tribe, the fire would have been difficult to contain.

“All I can say is this was an entire wonderful community of people who care deeply about their community and were successful because we all remained focused on what we were doing and the importance of safely suppressing fires,” he said. “And that is what this thing was all about.”