Our Investigation, Our Truth - Episode 10: Thank You Penny University Pre'Cents

Deborah Pfingston, Andrew Ashcraft's Mom, and Doug Harwood, Granite Mountain Hotshot Alumni, bring to an end the discussion revolving around what happened on and after June 30th, 2013.  Deborah and Doug know the truth was not told.  What they discovered and what they know has been revealed in this Penny University series.    They put their pain on hold, so others will hear what really happened.  

There has been a lot of listeners emailing.  Deborah and Doug thought they would let you read a small sample of some great ideas from a California wildland firefighter.  His ideas and attitude are a great example of these awesome people. 

"Hi, my name is Nathan and I’m on an engine in California. Been listing to your podcast and it’s very interesting what you found."  "When you talk about radios, tracking and GPS, the military has stuff that works I’m sure but does the forest service or anyone else have the money to get that tech to everyone. A couple ideas I thought of was the emergency beacons that public can buy for backpacking, in the snow, or a situation that a person may not have cell service. It’s basically an emergency beacon that’s calls search and rescue with emergency aid to your location. So when you activate it, they know who you are. Everyone engine, crew or what have you on your forest gets these and they get registered to each person. If engine 15 and buck rock hotshots activate their beacons, dispatch would see which person on the crews or maybe everyone activated the beacon, and what their location is. Then maybe there is someway that if you go off forest, you are able to give the forest or IC a way to get the same info if you activate it there. Or you leave your forest beacons at home but the fire you arrive at, you are issued a set for your group. The IC sets up the info to know that engine 15 has beacons 577-582 or something to that degree."  "Radios having the emergency button on them is a great idea... In California the State fire agency Cal Fire, they use a lot of ton guards and if you can’t get those right then communication will be gone."  "I do agree with the responsibility being passed down and people not taking ownership. We had a lightning fire on a sister forest that our strike team and gotten diverted too. They said we couldn’t put boots on the ground at the fire because there was too many hazard trees. So they wanted us to prep a community in case it ever blew up, but they were going to manage the fire. It was late in the season and there had been snow and rain in that area a few days prior to the fire. We did a 2 week assignment here. By the 3rd day we had done all that really needed to be done to the community but the forest just came up with random stuff to do. The kicker came when they started having people go up a dirt road that attached to another community. They wanted the hazard trees along the road removed. We all scratched our heads because we couldn’t go to the fire because of hazard trees but off the road it was ok. Nobody got injured, but still it was a needless reason that didn’t make sense. From the beginning the forest didn’t have a good plan in mind and was basically asking our strike team to form the plan for the community."

Space has limited more comments, but please know we would still love to hear from you.  Email Deborah or Doug at Pennyuniversity@protonmail.com.

Thank you for listening.