Joe Reddan requested that his Comment in response to Jonn Thomas regarding the politicized FEMA response to the 2022 Hermit’s Peak /Calf Canyon Fire be posted. It couldn’t be inserted in the Comment section because of featuring a photograph: https://forestpolicypub.com/2025/03/07/jim-petersen-and-evergreen-on-usfs-chief-tom-schultz/comment-page-1/#comment-534102
Joe worked for the USFS for 37 years, with six as District Ranger for the Pecos/Las Vegas Ranger District where the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire took place. He is currently Chief Forester and consultant for Flexilis Forestry, LLC, with offices in Colorado and California
Signing of the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) for $75 million “earmarked” to Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI) for “shaded fuel breaks in the Pacific Regions.” L-R California Representative Doug LaMalfa; former USFS Chief Randy Moore, US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, and SPI Chair and Chief Financial Officer Mark Emmerson. Note fuel break poster in the background. February 27, 2025 photo courtesy Flicker, USDA.
John Thomas, Jr.: Good points on the Moon Light Fire! Continuing our dialogue, here is a summary of the current Continuing Resolution (CR) forking out money to FEMA under the Hermits Peak Calf Canyon Wildfire Recovery Act and $75 million to Sierra Pacific Industries for fuel breaks.
Note from Sharon, as of earlier today this is the Dec. 21, 2024 CR, not today’s (out of Senate March 14, 2025) CR
American Relief Act Resolution (November 2024 – March 14, 2025) Continuing Resolution (CR) (PL 118-58)
FEMA:
$1,500,000 supplemental to the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire Restitution, on top of $4 billion appropriated in the Ukraine Supplemental of 2022, Division G.
FOREST SERVICE
Forest Service Operations: $68,100,000
Forest and Rangeland Research: $26,000,000
State, Private & Tribal Forestry: $208,000,000*
* includes Forest Health Protection (FHP) of $14,000,000 primarily in Maine, for Eastern Spruce Budworm control.
NATIONAL FOREST SYSTEM $2,523,000,000*
*includes $2,448,000,000 mitigation of wildfires, hurricanes, and other disasters for the years of 2022, 2023, and 2024, of which $75,000,000 is for “shaded fuel breaks in the Pacific Regions.”
Authority: Recruit and directly appoint personnel into the competitive service not withstanding all of the personnel laws until September 20, 2029.
********
For those who wondered how the FS could fund the shaded fuel breaks when it couldn’t hire back temporaries, this explains that the funding was a specific earmark.
Hat Tip to Dr. Bob who worked tirelesly to get this posted – Thank you Bob!
Sharon – thanks for all of the assist with this post.
One has to wonder about the “best government money can buy.” Ear marks have always been controversial. Say should SPI receive $75 million when Grizzly Flat – destroyed in the Caldor Fire received no money?
SPI bought Seneca Lbr from Aaron Jone’s daughters. Seneca had purchased the Pope and Talbot timberlands on either side of the Willamette River between highway 58 and Staley ridge and the Umpqua divide. I was there this last fall and drove by SPI logging unit. I noticed this strip of mechanically felled timber that was just a narrow band the went west from the haul road and over the top of a ridge. ?? Anomaly. To myself: it looks like a preventative fuel break between USFS Willamette NF and Pope sections of ?? 60 year old reprod. And then to self: Leave it to SPI to have been “burned” hard and act accordingly with the “loose canon” USFS “unplanned ignitions are opportunity to use POD planning and “treat” fuel skipping NEPA and the host of overlapping and convoluted planning strictures that guarantee any and all proposed actions by the US Govt on their own land is appealable and appeals are no more that leaving fish on the cutting table until the flies consume it all.
So the explanation of the judicial award of $1.5 Billion by a judge to “victims” of the Hermit’s Peak-CAlf Canyon fire must have won approval by 51 former heads of intelligence at the request of the “Autopen government” which is not a former empire in the middle east. Or Erdogan has allies I am not aware of.
Where oh where to begin?
Too much to respond to except that the $1.5 billion awarded by a judge appointed by Erdogan (Dictator of Turkey) and guarded and approved by the 51 “spooks” of the Hunter Biden lap top infamy to Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon victims is fever dreams.
In the American Relief Act (PL 118-158) Congress appropriated an additional $1.5 billion for reparations for the malfeasance of the US Forest Service bring the total of the reparation’s appropriation to $5.5billion.
Joe: Why can’t businesses and landowners get damages from the USFS for all of the damage they have done with forest and wildfire mismanagement in Oregon and California?
Dr. Bob – –
In a few words Sovereign Immunity.
To a limited extent the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) waives the Sovereign Immunity of the United States to allow citizens to file suit against the United States. However, the FTCA has a huge loophole in favor of the sovereign called the discretionary function exception (DFE). Plaintiffs have to overcome the exception’s purpose in preventing courts from second-guessing the government’s policy decisions. It’s not intended to protect the government from liability for violating its own safety mandates, but that is difficult to prove.
The U. S. Federal Court of Claims, an Article III court based in Washington, DC has jurisdiction among other things, over the “takings clause” of the Fifth Amendment. Private property loss and damage through wildfire can be adjudicated as a “taking.” The Tucker Act which also waives the United State’s sovereign immunity and grants jurisdiction to the Court of Federal Claims especially through inverse condemnation. Inverse condemnation is a legal standard whereby property owners can sue the government for taking or damaging their property without the government formally acquiring it through eminent domain and seek compensation for the loss.
Our friends in Montana have experienced some success with Chetco Resources LLC and Pistol Resources LLC v US.
For New Mexico, Federal compensation for “controlled burn” damage and destruction commenced with the Cerro Grande Fire ignited by a Park Service “burn boss” who has an award named after him for leading by example. How ironic? The Cerro Grande Fire burned through the Los Alamos Nuclear Lab and the City of Los Alamos, NM. The New Mexico Congressional delegation horse-traded for a special appropriation of $1billion in 2000. The precedence was set.
When, through the malfeasance of the Santa Fe National Forest the “controlled burn” at Las Dispensas escaped “control” in the first four hours of the burn, the precedence was not lost on the New Mexico Congressional delegation. Therefore, the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Recovery Act in the 2022 Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations bill (PL 117-80) initially appropriated $4billion and the American Relief Act (PL 118- 158) additionally appropriated $1.5billion.
Joe, something unique about Cerro Grande that might be of interest to readers. There were various studies (e.g, https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/ocas/pdfs/abrwh/scarpts/sca-cerrogrande-053012.pdf that came to different conclusions about how much many radioactive elements released into the air.
Thanks Sharon!
I can’t make heads of tails of the units of measure in the paper to know how dangerous or safe it was for wildland fire fighters to suppress the Cerro Grande. Los Alamos Nuclear Lab (LANL) invokes fear and loathing in many.
What I can say about the burn bosses in both fires (Cerro Grande and Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon) is that with less hubris in each man’s personality, these fires were avoidable.
Hating on the Forest Service is hardly a new phenomenon but the crusade to abolish FEMA is really about erasing Jimmy Carter’s legacy. Aside from that there is a tiny timber industry in northern New Mexico but lots of cottage fuelwood gigs some of which are operated by people who have lived on land managed by the Santa Fe National Forest for generations. Claims are being processed.
Another wildfire season exacerbated by human indifference is nigh, folks and hope you have enough defensible space.
Larry – –
I do not understand what you are saying? “…people who have lived on land managed by the Santa Fe National Forest for generations”.
There are no people residing on the lands of the SantaFe other than permitted recreation residences and a funky lease system at Cowels, NM.
Claims are being processed slowly
Cowles, Mr. Redden.
Picuris Pueblo has been battling with irrigators in the Mora Valley for water since 1820 when the first diversion from the Rio Pueblo de Taos, a tributary of the Rio Grande, became an acequia into the Mora, a tributary of the Canadian and Arkansas Rivers.
New Mexico has been home to a much larger aspen community in the fairly recent past. Morels fruit after fires in mixed pine/aspen habitat to entice animals to deposit organic material. Bison, elk and deer will crawl on their knees and loll their long tongues for morels fruiting under dead-fallen pine trees after a fire.
The Las Dispensas area has been a focus for prescribed fire since at least 2016 and fuel treatments were overdue. According to eyewitness reports the beaver are still working in upper Gallinas Canyon and green shoots are already coming up out of the ashes despite the ferocity of the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak wildfire complex.
Until it closed in 1939 the Tererro Mine in the headwaters of the Pecos River took gold, lead and other metals then left piles of toxic waste rock in their place. After major flooding in 1991 when sulfuric acid, aluminum and zinc swept into the river miner Freeport-McMoRan was held responsible for the deaths of some 100,000 Rio Grande cutthroat trout and for the subsequent decades of acid mine drainage.
Pirated fuelwood from the national forests in New Mexico and other mountain states keeps people alive, Mr. Reddan. Sorry that puts you on tilt.
Remanding the lands within the Santa Fe National Forest to the pueblos from whom they were seized should include a Wood Mizer LT70WIDE Super Hydraulic Portable Sawmill for each tribally managed district.
On this Larry, I agree with you about the Woodmizers to the Pueblos! The Government in general, and the FS in particular, can’t throw enough money at the Indigenous folks in northern New Mexico to start a good gnat smoke. However, give them the tools and leave them the hell alone and they will make it work! Something about “ownership”, balancing the need for what’s best for the land with what’s best for their people….
I’ve visited some of the Pueblos in “Nation to Nation” consultations and always felt a deep and reverent respect for their outlook on life…..
Thank you for your service to public lands, Mr. Z.
New Mexico News reports.
To date, the HP-CC prescribed burn escapes have cost US Tax payers a $3.95 BILLION congressional award and by a recent US District Court award of $1.5 Billion for “People living within a 2,200 square mile area eligible for smoke and ash payments from the towering smoke plume that lingered for weeks in the area as the fire burned,” according to a Source New Mexico analysis of an eligibility map for the out obtained. Las Vegas, NM, has received a one time payment for $98 million to replace water treatment facilities damaged during post fire floods.
To date, FEMA has spent $377,492,581 TO ADMINISTER paying victims of HP-CC prescribed fire. Fy23, FY24 & FY 25. $292,361,836 for “miscellaneous” described as 3rd party contracts, purchases of goods and services, facility maintenance, medical costs, and ‘other services not otherwise classified.’ oink oink.
I do have to ask how many North Carolina hurricane, flood and now fire victims have a $5.45 Billion “slop over fund” to make them whole from escaped prescribed burns? This fire happened on Chief Moore’s era as Chief, and add that to the Palisades fire in L.A. and the other 17 of the most costly fires in CA history that happened on his watch as R-5 Forester, including Dixie that was growing exponentially as he transitioned from R-5 to Washington DC and his stirring DEI introduction by POTUS Biden, head of the Ottopen Empire.
If I sound sarcastic it is earned. The 400,000 acres of Santiam Fire in Oregon, when East winds hit as forecast the 110,000 prescribed fire Lionshead, on BIA administered tribal lands, with Tracey Stone Manning, formerly head tree spiker and organizer for EarthFirst! heading the Bureau of Land Management in charge of the Lionshead prescribed fire from an unplanned ignition, and the fire “contained” and burning out fuels inside the perimeter, was overwhelmed by an Arctic cold high that stalled over MT and was drawn to the ‘heat low’ stalled in the interior valleys between the Ocean and Sierras and Cascades. 5 lives, a premature litigation allowed with a jury decision, and USFS withheld exculpatory evidence denied as the Chief denied the USFS personnel communicating with the Oregon Dept of Forestry fire examiners who released their report last week that said the 12 energized power lines they were able to investigate before PacificCorps and no cooperation with USFS resulted in any damning evidence as to secondary ignitions from the fire front of the Lionshead Prescribed burn and the Beachie Fire from the USFS Opal Creek 1996 designated Wilderness merged into super fire. Conflagration. From that point, the ever ingenious USFS and Overhead named the resulting conflagration now in primarily private timberlands the “Riverside fire” that kept the ‘other fire’ from primarily federal lands our of the legal fray. Got it.
Nobody got a freaking dime from Congress. FEMA was jackboots on property owner necks. Leave your burned out property or we will sic EPA on you for hazardous waste crimes against humanity. Then hauled off all the burnt metals in a consolidated sale to a junk dealer and “equitably distributed the funds.” Nobody has post fire examination of their property and no manifest of what was found. Vehicle? scrapped. Asbestos brake linings. Tear up the vinyl floor covering also asbestos… Anything that had lead paint. Any instrument that might have a mercury switch.. Lead bullets or shot melted to the shop flood. Deplorable’s caches of valuables burned and no evidence found. Finally, a certificate that victims can have insurance examiners and adjusters, bankers see what is left. Oh, and a used FEMA camp trailer to live in. Sad and terrible. But no payments to the prescribed federal fire that unbelievably ran west, over the summit of the Cascades from Central Oregon, burned through at least 3 wilderness areas to near nuclear power and not a word from the all but one elected statewide elected officers of Oregon leadership, and its one lone Republican from a gerrymandered congressional district that is geographically one of the largest in the US that is not a one congressperson state like Wyoming. AK. ND.
A third of a billion dollars for the US Government, represented by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to DISTRIBUTE $5.45 billion dollars. DOGE is real and necessary. Giving a person $3 and then taking $1 as the cost to move it from one account to EBT it to a victim.
Like the burning of our forests, billions of board feet of lumber we must now import, billions of plants and animals that do not respond to fire. THEY ARE DEAD. DEAD LIFE NO LONGER REPRODUCES. Early serial stage habitats will be occupied by pioneer species. For afar. Some will never be there again. Mass death is not guaranteed to replace lost species. Ask Chairman Xi. He faces the “one child” mandate over three or four generations. Chinese Han culture demands first born son is responsible for care of his elderly parents. Aborting all the girls, generationally, has exponential DECLINE. Xi actuaries know and report that there is nothing that can be done except for occupy lands with no abortions and send China males to mate with females not in China. Was “no border security” the liberal population bolstering scheme? Demographics academic geographers say China could enter the 22nd Century with a population of under 400,000,000, down from an estimated 1.3 Billion today. An aborted female does not reproduce. Nor does the missing daughter reproduce or the also missing granddaughter. Regressive and real. R&R.
We are now doing that to our forests. Dead relic trees are gone forever. Sequoia redwood. 20% of ALL the trees over 40″ across the stump fire killed in one recent year. 5% of ALL the sequoias on woodlands from seedlings to 3000+ years of age. In one year in the last decade. Killed by wildland fire.
When a third of “fire reparations” go to the federal agency distributing the “reparations” who tells us who else gets more of this money from one event that is becoming more “normal” each year? Someone has to collect the money, and then distribute it to FEMA that or those agencies have costs as well, and those likely unknown nor reported.
I might sound “angry” and that is correct. No federal fire victims elsewhere or hurricane victims, or flood victims , to my knowledge, have received money to rebuild their lives and dwellings, businesses. Federal subsidized insurance? Yes. With no insurance? None. US Government has no legal path to pay victims except litigation against the US Government and each case is dismissed on Article VI supremacy clause findings. Or, if US Government accepts a tort litigation claim under the FTCA, 99% or more are dismissed under “discretionary function exception.”
The Hermit’s Peak-Can Canyon largesse was no more than pre election interference to please the then congressional Democrat Majority in New Mexico, and nowhere more conflicted the then Interior secretary, former New Mexico Democrat congresswoman and tribal member Deb Haaland. The Ottopen Empire believed itself bullet proof and Trump fair game and now at it once more. Defend, if you will, FEMA spending $377,492,581 to distribute but ” $2.99 Billion by the start of FY 2026, with $2.55 Billion unspent for remaining claimants, minus future administrative costs. As of March 11, 2025, FEMA had paid $1.97 Billion to fire victims.
You know what is missing? $2.5 Billion awarded by the congressional bill in the DoD Emergency Ukraine funding that included the HP-CC congressional award. No accountability. What tribes got how much for what damage?
“A billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon you are talking real money.” Attributed to Illinois Senator Everette Dirksen, warning about escalating federal spending. Real or not, the words still resonate. Spending is undeniable and unsustainable by the US Government via the Congress and now Judges. This little ditty is like a blue whale dorsal fin. A tiny sign of of the underlying monster consuming voter and worker krill, and the diminished societal confidence in government leadership from either or any political party.
I apologize for my rant’s length. $5.45 Billion “awarded” and in the hands of FEMA. Homeland Security is so busy with criminal illegal entrants I worry FEMA is sitting on $3.45 unspent billions and who is going to end up with the money, and I know it is not the folks still in a FEMA camp trailer growing old while ONLY the special souls in NM get paid billions to be a balm for their suffering from smoke and ash from prescribed fires and PODs summer coming on fast.
I stopped reading after “Tracey Stone Manning, formerly head tree spiker.” When I know somebody is providing misinformation for one statement, I have to suspect the rest is suspect, too. https://forestpolicypub.com/2021/07/19/retired-law-enforcement-fs-employee-quoted-in-wall-street-journal-and-the-non-partisan-table-of-past-indiscretions/