By Mary O’KEEFE
The Station Fire meeting that had been postponed from early August has now been rescheduled for Oct. 12 according to Congressman Adam Schiff.
“The goal is to hear from representatives of the Forest Service and other responding agencies, as well as outside experts and critics, to shed additional light on firefighting procedures and techniques, how they were applied during the Station Fire and how they should be revised to improve outcomes in the future,” stated Schiff in a press release.
Congressmen Schiff, David Dreier and Buck McKeon had planned the panel discussion in August but had to reschedule when Congress was called back into a special August session.
The rescheduled meeting will have two panels of invited guests. The first panel will include William Derr, retired Forest Service employee; Don Feser, retired Angeles National Forest fire chief; Duncan Baird, a homeowner from Vogel Flats Fire Recovery Alliance; Jody Noiron, Forest supervisor ANF; Will Spyrison, retired Div. Chief ANF; and John Tripp chief
deputy of Emergency Operations, Los Angeles County Fire Department. The second
panel will include Tom Harbour, director of Fire and Aviation Management, Forest Service; Bob Cavage, president Wildfire Research Network; David Gillotte, president International Association of Firefighters Local 1014; and P. Michael Freeman, chief LACoFD.
The meeting will take place on the heels of the Government Accountability Office accepting a request to investigate the Station Fire. The GAO will not began to organize its investigation until January. Schiff and Dreier had made the request to the office for the investigation after learning several U.S. Forest Service dispatch recordings were withheld during the initial investigation.
“There has been a great deal of speculation about the decision making during the early hours of the fire and I hope that this panel will help us get all the facts out, and give people a chance to raise issues and questions that haven’t been addressed,” Schiff said when the meeting was first scheduled in August.
The meeting will be held on Oct. 12 from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. at the Richard H. Chambers US Court of Appeals building, Courtroom Three, 125 South Grand Ave. in Pasadena.