The Smokey Wire : National Forest News and Views

This is a little outside standard TSW scope, but in the general “related issues.” The Forest Service was involved in the LA Fires and from what I can see, came out looking good.  Another example:

On to Dana’s guest post. Thanks, Dana!

Dana Tibbitts

California’s long-awaited investigation into the Los Angeles fires reveals a shattered command-and-intelligence system. At the same time, an Israeli military data unit says it was helping construct the operational picture for American responders. That combination raises questions that “mutual aid” alone does not answer.

There is a remarkable contradiction emerging from the official investigation of the January 2025 Los Angeles fires.

California has now documented a response system plagued by fractured command, delayed evacuations, conflicting maps, missed intelligence and profound failures of situational awareness. Critical information from people on the ground failed to reach incident commanders. Agencies operated independently. Satellite intelligence existed but apparently was not effectively incorporated into the response. In western Altadena, commanders did not fully understand what the fire had done until daylight—after much of the community had already burned.

Yet during the same extended wildfire emergency, an Israeli military data unit says it was helping American responders build precisely what California’s own system was struggling to maintain: a coherent operational picture.

That may not make the Israeli assistance improper.

But neither does the phrase “mutual aid” answer the questions it raises.

International mutual aid is commonplace. Firefighters cross borders. Nations exchange aircraft, personnel, equipment and technical expertise during disasters. Such assistance can be entirely appropriate and lifesaving.

But there is a meaningful difference between bringing additional firefighting capacity into an established American command structure and a foreign military data command processing disaster information overseas, constructing an operational portal for American forces and producing assessments described as supporting “strategic decision-making.”

The newly released investigation has made one thing painfully clear: during these fires, the operational picture mattered enormously—and in critical moments, California did not have one.

The 724-page independent investigation commissioned by Governor Gavin Newsom identified failures across interconnected systems of incident management, evacuation coordination, situational awareness, operational intelligence, communications and resource accountability. The operational picture remained confused and elusive well into the fires themselves.

The picture was no better in Pacific Palisades. The Los Angeles Fire Department, Los Angeles Police Department, and other agencies did not function as a seamless unified command. Police and fire officials discovered they were working from different evacuation maps.

County firefighters, frustrated by what the report called the inadequacy of the command organization, began operating independently. As many as 26 units reportedly deployed without incident command knowing where they were. The investigation describes “credibility issues,” lack of trust, and an institutional disconnect between command staff and the people actually working on the ground.

Then comes one of the most consequential findings of all. As winds grounded the aircraft normally used as eyes in the sky, fire officials failed to make effective use of satellite intelligence that was already available.

FireGuard products showed the Eaton Fire beginning to move west hours before commanders understood what was happening. Yet, with one exception, responders interviewed for the investigation did not identify those satellite products among the intelligence tools they had used. By the time incident command fully recognized that the fire had swept into western Altadena, daylight had arrived and much of the community had already burned.

And here the phrase becomes more than metaphor: while California slept, an Israeli military data unit was subsequently working through American nighttime hours to help construct the operational picture responders would wake up to.

Information existed but did not move. Responders on the ground knew things commanders did not know. Agencies were working from different maps. Units were moving outside command. Satellite imagery existed but apparently was not being incorporated effectively into the operational picture. Incident commanders were, in some cases, literally in the dark.

So where, precisely, did the Israeli military data operation fit into this fractured system?

Israeli reporting described a specialized unit inside the Israel Defense Forces Home Front Command working from Israel during American nighttime hours, processing information and preparing assessments for American responders.

According to Israel Hayom, the unit developed a “specialized daily portal for all American forces in the field,” combining wildfire locations, infrastructure, schools, power systems and other information into a common operating picture. Israeli officials said that information enabled “strategic decision-making.” Lt. Col. Yosef Salem described a two-part structure in which personnel on the ground identified needs while a command-center team thousands of miles away processed information and developed solutions.

And then came the detail that should still stop us in our tracks: the system required only “a single ground contact.”

Who was that ground contact?

Who authorized the connection between the Israeli military data operation and the California wildfire response? What information moved through that connection—and between which agencies? And when Israeli officials say their products enabled “strategic decision-making,” what decisions did they help shape?

These are not accusations. They are basic questions of command, authority, data access, and accountability.

They become more consequential when viewed alongside the satellite issue. California’s investigation found that potentially valuable American satellite products were not being effectively incorporated into the Eaton response. Yet CAL FIRE Staff Chief David Scheurich later told the Times of Israel that Israeli responders had “real-time live satellite imaging” while their American counterparts often had to go through a request process. CAL FIRE was impressed enough to consider incorporating Israeli mapping methods.

The question, then, is not simply why Israel had satellite intelligence that America did not. America already had sophisticated wildfire intelligence of its own. The sharper question is why existing American intelligence was apparently failing to reach or inform incident command while an Israeli military data unit was simultaneously being praised for helping construct an effective operational picture.

Was Israel simply organizing information that California already had but could not effectively integrate? That is entirely possible. Was the Israeli team helping overcome bureaucratic barriers that had prevented critical intelligence from reaching incident commanders? Perhaps. If so, that may have been valuable mutual aid.

But if that is what happened, it reveals something astonishing about the weakness of the American system.

During one of the deadliest and most destructive wildfire disasters in California history, the state’s own investigation now shows that critical information was not reaching the people who needed it. At the same time, an overseas military data unit says it was building an operational portal for American forces and producing assessments intended to support strategic decision-making.

That distinction is the issue. Mutual aid may explain why foreign specialists were here. It does not, by itself, explain the authority, access or role of a foreign military command operating inside the information stream of an American disaster.

And because it is not the same thing, it requires a different level of transparency.

The issue ultimately comes down to control of the operational picture—who builds it, who has access to it, and how intelligence becomes action. During an American disaster, who exercises that authority?

The newest Los Angeles fire investigation is, above all, a story about what can happen when information does not reach command. Lives were lost while reports from the ground failed to move, evacuation orders lagged, agencies worked in parallel, and satellite intelligence sat largely outside the decision loop.

If the Israeli operation was entirely routine, properly authorized, and appropriately governed, then transparency should make that easy to establish. Tell Californians what entered the portal, what came back out, who received those products, and where they sat within the Incident Command System.

What makes the silence in California more striking is how openly Israel told the story. The involvement received considerably more attention there than it did here.

Israel Hayom did not bury the role beneath the language of routine mutual aid. Its headline proclaimed: “How the IDF helped save LA from wildfires.” The article described young IDF soldiers working from the Home Front Command headquarters, using the time difference to prepare American teams for the morning, and characterized their data analysis as instrumental in saving lives and protecting property. Israel was not hiding its involvement. Quite the contrary. It was celebrating it.

That leaves California with a remarkably simple problem. If an Israeli military command helped “save LA from wildfires,” as Israeli reporting proudly declared, Californians are entitled to know exactly what that means.

Israel was willing to tell the world what its military command accomplished in Los Angeles. California should be equally willing to tell its citizens exactly what role that command was given.

Mutual aid may explain why they came. It does not explain who let them into the operational loop—or how deep that authorization goes.

Source notes:

Israel Hayom — “How the IDF Helped Save LA From Wildfires.” Describes the IDF Home Front Command data unit working during American nighttime hours, preparing assessments for U.S. responders, developing a “specialized daily portal for all American forces in the field,” and supplying information described as enabling “strategic decision-making.” The account also describes the need for a “single ground contact.”

The Times of Israel — coverage of the Israeli wildfire delegation in California. Reports on the six-person Israeli delegation and quotes CAL FIRE Staff Chief David Scheurich describing Israeli responders’ access to real-time satellite imagery, contrasted with the request process often required by American responders, as well as CAL FIRE’s interest in elements of the Israeli mapping approach.

Oh, this has gone on for decades. And, you know, we’re still working off a copper wire in some of this stuff. I mean, we are decades behind when it comes to IT infrastructure, what your local fire department would have. I mean, if the local fire department in San Diego or Boise or Orange County, you name the place,

if they had the same systems that the feds are operating under, people would be outraged. It’s not uncommon for systems to fail. What do we do as firefighters? Oh, we figure out how to work around. Right? And pretty soon we do that enough and that just becomes our norm.

I made some editing errors in the version sent out in the email , so please use the link to read the correct version of the previous post.

If you listened to The Hotshot Wakeup Fennessey interview, Fennessey talked about the shortage of what he called “middle managers”:

I’m like, well, whoa, that’s news to me. So there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of contractors that could be doing this work, but they’re not doing it because we are the limiting factor. You know, fast forward to Washington. Before we got to Washington, again, Chief Fisher and I Meeting with the Army Colonel out of Pentagon, he comes to visit NIFC and myself and Russ Long from the force. Russ is managing that program. Amazing. Russ Long is an amazing individual, great firefighter. Anyways, he introduces folks and they’re getting near the end of their 30-day mission. And he says something to the effect that, you know, If things were to keep on, we probably could come up with another battalion. And I think a battalion is 240. I don’t know. It’s a lot of people. But it doesn’t sound like you guys have the ability. Basically, you talk about middle managers to manage that. And I think we saw weather on the horizon.

THE STORY OF TWO FIRES: HOW AMERICA LEARNED TO IMPORT WILDFIRE CAPACITY—AT WHAT PRICE?

We have become remarkably adept at delivering the workforce—and the funding—after the crisis begins. RSR gives us the opportunity to build the solution before the fire comes.

So what are we waiting for?

THE STORY OF TWO FIRES: HOW AMERICA LEARNED TO IMPORT WILDFIRE CAPACITY—AT WHAT PRICE?

We have become remarkably adept at delivering the workforce—and the funding—after the crisis begins. RSR gives us the opportunity to build the solution before the fire comes.

So what are we waiting for? 

If anyone wants to understand America’s wildfire workforce equation in crisis, look at two fires burning this summer in Washington and Oregon.

Lightning started Washington’s Little Giant Fire July 15 in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest. By September 17, it had grown to 172,814 acres, one of the largest fires of Washington’s tempestuous 2026 season. Little Giant required an extraordinary mobilization: the National Interagency Fire Center deployed approximately 250 active-duty soldiers from Joint Base Lewis-McChord to support wildfire suppression, with the soldiers moving to Little Giant on August 20.

And Little Giant was only part of the problem. Oregon’s Rowe Creek Complex ultimately reached 373,927 acres. Put the two together and the scale comes into focus: two states, two enormous incidents, 546,741 acres within their fire footprints, and thousands of people mobilized—crews, engines, aircraft, heavy equipment, incident management teams and military personnel. Some are coming from farther and farther away.
Moving the Shortage

This summer the United States requested wildfire assistance from Australia and New Zealand. The first contingent brought 74 fire-management specialists, including a 15-person Incident Management Team. A second wave brought another 240 specialists, for a total of 314 assigned across the Northwest and Great Basin.

These are not bargain-basement firefighters brought in because America can find cheaper labor overseas. They are experienced professionals, and they are coming because America needs their qualifications. Mutual aid is fundamental to wildfire response: a quiet region helps a busy one, states help one another, and America’s international partners help us—as we help them.

That system saves lives. The question is why, year after year, we have to call for reinforcements as though adequate fireline staffing can be delivered on demand.

There is a significant difference between mutual aid providing surge capacity during an extraordinary emergency and a system becoming dependent upon moving scarce qualifications around the country—and eventually around the world—to fill predictable gaps. We have become remarkably adept at moving the shortage. Perhaps it is time we became equally serious about fixing it.

The Real Shortage

Because the shortage isn’t simply firefighters. America does not merely have a firefighter shortage. We have a qualification and command deficit.

Anyone who has spent a career in wildland fire understands the distinction. We can hire seasonal firefighters, buy engines, contract aircraft and deploy sophisticated technology. But none of it substitutes for qualified people who can lead firefighters, supervise equipment, manage divisions, run operations and command complex incidents.

Those people cannot be manufactured during an emergency. A beginning firefighter does not become a crew boss overnight, and a crew boss does not suddenly become a division supervisor, operations chief or incident commander. The profession is built upon qualifications, field experience, mentorship and judgment accumulated over years. When that pipeline becomes too thin, crews cannot deploy without qualified supervision, equipment may lack people qualified to lead it, and technology cannot substitute for command.

A fire engine without a qualified leader is a parked fire engine. In the middle of a wildfire emergency, it might as well be in the boneyard.

Qualifications Travel. Local Knowledge Does Not

There is another part of this equation those who fight wildfire understand instinctively: qualifications travel; local knowledge does not. A firefighter arriving from another state may be superbly qualified. An Australian incident manager may bring decades of experience. But neither arrives carrying intimate knowledge of a Washington drainage network or an Oregon backroad system—the prevailing winds, communications dead zones, escape routes, water sources or peculiarities of a particular piece of Western terrain.

That is not an argument against mutual aid, but a strong case for maintaining a deeper regional bench in the American West.

And that brings us back to Oregon. While America spends astronomical sums delivering wildfire capacity after fires begin, a project designed to build that capacity before the next fire has spent nearly eight years trying to cross the funding finish line.

Build the Bench

The Rogue Siskiyou Regional Wildfire Training Center—RSR—is not simply an Oregon project. It is potentially part of the larger answer to a Western workforce crisis.

RSR has organized as a nonprofit, secured a 31.5-acre former lumber-mill site near Gold Beach, completed environmental and planning work, acquired equipment and generated millions in regional support. At full capacity, it is designed to train approximately 1,600 people annually, building a professional pipeline from entry-level training through crew leadership, supervision, operations, management and ultimately command.

And those people do not belong to Gold Beach. They become part of a much larger Western wildfire workforce. They can fight fire in Oregon, reinforce Washington or deploy elsewhere as national mobilization requires. The point is not to eliminate movement between states; it is to build a deeper reservoir of qualified Western personnel from which the mutual-aid system can draw.

By incorporating hazardous-fuels reduction, forest restoration and other off-season land-management work, RSR offers more than seasonal training. It offers year-round workforce development, accumulated experience and professional advancement—the things required to produce tomorrow’s supervisors, operations leaders and commanders.

And then We Come to the Money

Here is where America’s wildfire workforce equation becomes very difficult to explain.

Rowe Creek ultimately burned 373,927 acres, with its last reported estimated suppression cost reaching approximately $120.7 million—or about $323 per acre.

Then there is Little Giant. As of September 17, the fire had reached 172,814 acres, with estimated suppression costs of approximately $162.7 million—about $941 per acre.

Two fires. 546,741 acres. Approximately $283.4 million spent fighting them.

Now put another number beside that: $37 million.

That is the current estimated capital cost of building the entire RSR facility—a permanent investment with the capacity to train approximately 1,500 wildfire professionals every year, from entry-level firefighters through crew leadership, supervision, operations, management and command.

In other words, the estimated suppression cost of these two fires alone is more than seven and a half times the projected cost of building RSR.

Nobody is suggesting that a training center would have prevented Little Giant or Rowe Creek, or that $37 million invested in training infrastructure would make catastrophic wildfire—or the enormous expense of fighting it—disappear. That isn’t the comparison. The comparison is between what America is willing to spend reactively once fires become major incidents, and what we struggle to invest proactively in permanent capacity before the fire comes, as it inevitably will.

We will spend hundreds of millions fighting major fires, move firefighters across the continent, activate the military, fly highly qualified wildfire specialists across the Pacific, and sustain enormous incident organizations for weeks or months. And then we struggle to assemble $37 million for permanent infrastructure capable of building the very workforce and leadership capacity we are scrambling to find.

There is something fundamentally backwards about that equation.

Where is the Capacity, Continuity and Will to Put Out the Fire?

The West does not need new ways to put more fire on the land, more symposiums explaining that wildfire is a problem, or repeated reminders that the workforce is strained. The people running these fires already know. What they need is capacity, continuity and experience—and the institutional will to build and sustain them. Above all, they need command: command that will “first put out the fire.”

RSR is not an alternative to America’s mutual-aid system. Quite the opposite. Build RSR so mutual aid can remain what it was intended to be: surge capacity—not a recurring answer to predictable workforce and qualification shortages.

Because we are already paying for the shortage—in aircraft hours and engine miles, mobilization and demobilization, military deployments, and personnel moved thousands of miles from one incident to another. We pay for it when experienced wildfire professionals must be flown across an ocean because our own system needs their qualifications. Above all, we pay when there simply aren’t enough experienced people available where and when they are needed.

We are living inside the hole created by yesterday’s failures.

Little Giant and Rowe Creek reveal the same underlying problem: the people fighting these fires need a deeper bench behind them. The national mobilization system is telling us what it needs, and the fires are telling us what it costs when that capacity falls short. Meanwhile, in southern Oregon, a project specifically designed to build that capacity is waiting—strengthening the national system while putting trained personnel and rapid-response capacity closer to the communities that need them.

 The Choice: Fish or Cut Bait

At what point does delay become prevarication—a choice without accountability for the staggering consequences to the beautiful landscapes of Chelan County, Washington, now laid waste at enormous cost to taxpayers?

Failure to fund RSR is not the absence of a decision. It is a decision to continue paying for the shortage instead of building the capacity to fix it.

Government has developed an insanely expensive habit of using our taxpayer dollars without limit once disaster arrives, while becoming skittish about investing a fraction of that amount to build readiness before the fire comes.

That equation has to change, before there is nothing left to burn.

Build the workforce. Build the leadership. Build the command capacity.

If we are serious about wildfire readiness, build RSR. Now.

The National Wildfire Alliance has formalized a partnership with the Rogue Siskiyou Regional Wildfire Training Center to support and advance RSR as a regional wildfire workforce and command-capacity resource.

The National Wildfire Alliance is a nonprofit public-interest organization working to improve wildfire policy, forest stewardship, suppression effectiveness, public accountability and regional firefighting capacity. NWA brings together wildfire professionals, researchers, landowners and public advocates to advance practical solutions that protect forests, communities and the people who defend them.

Dana Tibbitts is an author and investigative journalist specializing in wildfire risk, evacuation safety, and government accountability. She is co-founder with her husband of the Tahoe East Shore Alliance and serves on the Board of the National Wildfire Alliance. Dana is also co-author of Harnessing the Sky.

 Sources

National Interagency Fire Center, “National Fire News,” August 26 and August 31, 2026. National Preparedness Level 5; national incident and personnel statistics.

National Interagency Fire Center, “Military Support,” updated August 31, 2026. Active-duty U.S. Army support from Joint Base Lewis-McChord and deployment to the Little Giant Fire.

Central Oregon Fire Information, “Rowe Creek Complex / August 15, 2026.” Official acreage 373,784; 1,318 personnel; 89% containment.

Oregon State Fire Marshal, “Oregon State Fire Marshal resources demobilize from Rowe Creek Complex as containment reaches 89 percent,” August 18, 2026.

National Interagency Fire Center, “International Support — 2026 Australia and New Zealand mobilization.” 74-person first contingent, including a 15-person Incident Management Team; 240-person second wave; Northwest and Great Basin assignments.

Washington State Standard / Oregon Public Broadcasting, “Cost to battle 20 wildfires in Washington has topped $200M,” August 19, 2026. Washington DNR data showing $207 million in firefighting costs for 20 fires in roughly one month.

RSR project materials supplied by the author: site, project history, training-capacity model and current estimated $37 million capital cost.

PNW Roads, https://pnwroads.com/incident.php?id=15890

I recommend listening to The Hotshot Wakeup’s interview with USWFS Chief Brian Fennessey last Friday.  There’s nothing like hearing directly from the horse’s mouth. As we thanked the fire workforce a few weeks agao, he also attributes the success of this fire season to the workforce.. despite the challenges of a low snowpack and organizational changes, they pulled it off.

That doesn’t mean the line officer wasn’t there sharing resource values at risk and those sorts of things, but how well that went. Now, there’s occasions where we may have new FMOs, unit chiefs, where maybe that didn’t go as smoothly as it needed to. Not a surprise.

Previously, THW had covered about some internal tension going on in the Forest Service wildfire space, with some folks supportive of the new organization, and other folks highly worried about the FS wildfire folks going over.

There were four  areas specifically that Fennessey touched on that I want to engage with.1,  Line officers’ authorities and budgets  2 What stays and what goes with USWFS in terms of project planning and litigation. 3.Why agencies can have a culture of “no”, and what happened to Service First? and 4. Communication problems and the broader issue of why problems don’t get fixed. As always, you are invited to listen and bring up your own topics from the interview.

I thought that this was interesting

but all the geographic area fire chiefs and the exec team. There’s probably 40, 50 people on this call every Thursday that goes for a couple hours and These are the leaders of the organization and getting honest feedback on what’s working and maybe what’s not.

I don’t know if other parts of Interior and the FS have a similar process.  For sure, in my experience, folks will tell things to third parties they won’t tell their bosses.

I’ll start with what he said about line officers being equals and not superiors.