[Heather Campbell]
Kaleena Lynde is a Forest Service Eldorado National Forest firefighter (Sly Park Station). I copied her response to those who have accused the Forest Service of “Letting this fire burn”. Not on this FB page, but on other sites, misinformation and rumors about the Caldor Fire has regressed … all those that initially responded to the Caldor Fire where local crews who live within our county. So, when you hear someone spreading more rumors about how this fire was left to burn, please speak up.
Here is a first person response from someone who was there fighting this fire from the start … as written by Kaleena:
As my second roll wraps up on the #CaldorFire (34th day total) I am thankful for a lot. The evacuation in my neighborhood was lifted just as my current assignment started and I get to move back into our home tomorrow (it’s been since August 17th). There are so many people that don’t get to move back home, my heart is broken for them. The two rolls I did on this fire were working with my local fire family, some of the most hardworking, determined, problem solving firefighters (forestry technicians) out there. Seeing and feeling the tremendous amount of support makes me appreciate our communities to new levels and helps restore my energy to keep going for the remainder of the season. My family and friends for the immense help they were to us during all of this. Taking on so much so that Matt and I could focus on the firefight without worrying about Kirin, the chickens or all our belongings we evacuated. We couldn’t do this life without you
As the fire activity dies down I am reading more and more conspiracies / misinformation throughout the Caldor Fire group page, ElDorado Co Watch and elsewhere, with people saying we “let the fire burn” or “didn’t take any action” the first night or next day, just to name a few. These theory’s are so far from the truth or reality it’s shocking, even coming from people angry, grieving and looking for someone to blame.
The engine I was on was one of the first resources the night of the 14th trying to gain access into the drainage as the fire was torching trees and raining spot fires around us. The sadness I and my crew members feel that we couldn’t make access or find a way to contain it that first night is all consuming. All of us who responded, federal, state, local government and county had every one of our plans and tactics overran by the fire all throughout the night and next day. Resistant to containment doesn’t come close to cover the fierce energy and power burning in that drainage.
I would give almost anything for us to have been successful in catching it small but the one thing I wouldn’t give is the life of the responders who were dispatched that night. You can’t put people in a steep brush filled drainage with no escape route and fire is running upslope at them. Firefighters could get hurt or killed and with the fires intensity it would have burned right through us. I understand being angry, sad, feeling helpless and wanting something or someone held accountable but implying we (responders) didn’t do absolutely everything in our power to stop it is what truly sickens me.
I know a vast majority reading this aren’t putting blame on us or implying our intentions weren’t anything but to put this fire out as quickly as possible but for those implying the worst about us please focus your anger and grief instead into something that will help heal and rebuild what we have lost instead of trying to tear it down.
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I’m amazed and perplexed with the quislings that exist to defend the indefensible. The use of the stigma “conspiracy theory” was probably used by the Nazi’s when rumors got out that depopulating Jews from their communities wasn’t enough. And that Genocide of the Jews at concentration camps usually in the German Forest service was just a “conspiracy theory.” Many Germans admitted that this was hidden from their knowledge. The infamous propaganda minister, Paul Joseph Goebbels, a quisling to humanity perverted the news media.
60 minutes has already revealed that night helicopter tankers were barred from putting out the fire. Residents at this point were hearing rumors, one from either Cal Fire or USFS that “we cannot fly at night or in the smoke,” yet they banned those from Orange County who could. This person(s) who banned this are essentially the same human intellect that would consent to exterminating property or humans by creating an unartfully persuading story that “let it burn” is a conspiracy theory myth rumor. Yet, credible sources, one: the entire Congressional members, and Orange County Tanker Squadron of of night capable fire fighters report that there was a “let it burn policy” because they were told, backing up the claims of the US Congress that there is a let it burn policy that disregards human life and property that conveniently satisfied several liberal ideological efforts, one depopulating forests to protect wildlife and nature, and another to depopulate conservative voters from their communities, albeit perhaps only a convenient coincidence.
Tom McClintock sent out an email 6 days prior to Caldor informing us about “US Forest Service Let it Burn Policy” that according to McClintock interview. To claim “rumor and conspiracy theory” has no legitimate basis seems to work for those who worship state authority to cover up the unforgivable deplorable acts of allowing this fire to create a money grab for firefighters, cleanup crews, environmentalists, while at the same time SBA and FEMA declare to the victims on their applications, that the Biden and Newsom “declared disasters” don’t exist. Here’s McClintocks August 10th email, mind you 6 days prior to Caldor:
Sorry, Forest Service: Fire is NOT our Friend
Congressman McClintock delivered the following remarks on the House floor in opposition to the U.S. Forest Service’s “let burn” policy.
On July 4th , lightning struck a tree in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest in Alpine County, California, igniting a small fire that smoldered for days in a quarter acre of rugged terrain. According to Sheriff Rick Stephens, California’s fire-fighting agency, CalFire, dispatched a crew to put it out. But they were told to “stand down” by the U.S. Forest Service, which proceeded to “monitor” the fire instead. That is to say, they did precisely nothing. Twelve days later, the “Tamarack Fire” exploded out of control, consuming nearly 70,000 acres as of this writing.
One of the towns in its path was Woodfords, California. In 1987, the Woodfords Fire Department responded to a report of fire on Forest Service land near their town. They, too were turned away. Federal officials threatened Woodfords residents with arrest for even trying to extinguish the small blaze. Hours later, the fire exploded to 6,500 acres, costing 25 families their homes.
Apparently, the Forest Service has learned nothing in 34 years.
This “let burn” policy of federal land managers began in 1972 , during the height of the radical environmental movement. Essentially, it holds that “fire is our friend.” It stems from the premise that fire is nature’s way of cleaning up forests, and that active suppression of fires leads to a build-up of excess fuels.
That’s right, as far as it goes. An untended forest is like an untended garden: it will grow and grow until it chokes itself to death and is ultimately consumed by catastrophic fire. That is how nature gardens. The U.S. Forest Service was formed to remove excess growth before it can burn and to preserve our forests in a healthy condition from generation to generation. Or more simply, to do a little gardening.
In California, active land management reduced acreage annually lost to wildfire from more than four million acres in pre-Columbian times to just a quarter million acres during the 20th century. Federal foresters suppressed brush growth and auctioned off excess timber to logging companies that paid for the harvesting rights. Those revenues funded local governments and the Forest Service.
Environmental laws adopted in the 1970’s now require years of environmental studies at a cost of millions of dollars before forest thinning can be undertaken. That essentially brought the era of active land management to an end. The result? California’s wildfire damage has returned to its pre-historic level: more than four million acres burned last year. Nature is a lousy gardener.
In 1988, when the federal “let burn” policy produced the disastrous Yellowstone Fires, President Reagan reversed it . “I did not even know (the policy) existed…The minute that this happened out there and Don Hodel went out, he made it plain that, no, we were withdrawing from that policy,” President Reagan said.
Reagan left. The policy returned. And the devastation it has caused since then is tragic, avoidable and incalculable.
Especially given the hazardous condition of today’s forests, sensible policy would give top priority to extinguishing small fires before they can explode out of control.
Scrambling to explain their obvious dereliction of duty, Deputy Forest Supervisor Jon Stansfield complained that the Forest Service just didn’t have the resources to put out the small fire when a single water drop by helicopter could have stopped it cold. Yet they had the resources to photograph it by helicopter, had the resources to do countless air drops after they allowed it to explode, and apparently even blocked a CalFire crew from putting it out.
The federal government owns 96 percent of Alpine County, leaving it with virtually no tax base and entirely dependent on tourism attracted by the national forest. The fire has not only taken people’s homes and destroyed their businesses, but it has severely damaged the forest resource that the entire economy depends upon for tourism.
It is dangerous nonsense to “monitor” incipient fires in today’s forest tinderbox, even if they seem to pose no immediate danger. No person in his right mind would “monitor” a rattlesnake curled up in his bedroom because it isn’t doing much of anything. He would kill it before it does.
In our national forests, only the Forest Service can prevent small blazes from becoming forest fires. Its time they did. END QUOTE.
I see there are a few quislings that rush to quell any reality about any “let it burn policy” in the midst of actual real investigative discovery. I would love to follow the paper trail and see who these quislings are, and who they are employed by.