When an unattended campfire near Idaho's Sawtooth National Forest grew into what would become the seven-acre Cabin Creek Fire on July 12, the Forest Service didn't send a truck and a crew.
It sent an air armada – helicopters, air tankers, tactical planes and a Black Hawk. Nine aircraft in all, converging on a blaze so small and so easily reached by ground crews that veteran officials say the response defies explanation, except for one detail, reported the Washington Post.
The fire started 15 miles from the mega-ranch of Michael Boren, the Donald Trump-appointed undersecretary who oversees the federal agency he called for help.
According to two Forest Service officials, Boren phoned regional and national offices repeatedly that day, including once in the middle of the night, demanding to know why more aircraft weren't already in the air and when reinforcements would arrive to battle the blaze.
The Washington Post's flight-path analysis found aircraft streamed in from across the West, including a tanker pulled off another Nevada fire, for an operation that lasted a few hours and burned through roughly $114,000 in federal money.
Compare that to how the same agency handled a nearly identical fire weeks earlier, when a 21-acre blaze near Sugarloaf, Idaho, on June 25 drew just three aircraft for about 13 minutes. Cabin Creek, at less than half that size, got triple the aircraft for a mission stretching hours.
"I can't think of a time in my 38-year career where I saw a response like that for a five-acre fire," said Steve Ellis, a 38-year Forest Service veteran and former BLM deputy director. "It sounds like it was overkill."
One official with direct knowledge of the calls went further, describing Boren's conduct as "putting pressure on staff to throw more resources at" the fire.
At least some aircraft were pulled from fires burning elsewhere in Idaho, a state juggling three separate wildfires that same day under a historic heat dome. The nation's fire preparedness level stood at four out of five when Cabin Creek broke out, and three days later it hit the maximum level 5 – the earliest that's happened in a decade.
Former fire officials warned that funneling scarce aircraft toward one undersecretary's backyard, while the rest of the West burned, is exactly the kind of favoritism the national coordination system is designed to prevent.
A spokesman for the Agriculture Department denied Boren was simply conducting routine oversight when he repeatedly called for assistance with the fire near his property.
“Boren is expected to have regular contact with the agencies he oversees," said department spokesman Michael Abboud. "The fact that a senior government official would be monitoring and communicating with other government officials about an event he oversees is a non-story ... At no point did he pressure leadership or order more resources to fight this or any other fire.”
