Report exonerates Park Service employees involved in New Mexico fire

National Park Service employees who accidentally set off a devastating wildfire last year in New Mexico are not to blame for the blaze, according to a report released Wednesday by a team of investigators. The report, released by an interagency panel investigating the fire, blamed flawed fire management policies at the National Park Service instead of human error for the blaze that destroyed more than 200 homes in New Mexico last summer. "The board of inquiry and other investigations found that direction provided by the agency was inadequate, and the agency's policies themselves had weakness," said Karen P. Wade, director of the Park Service's Rocky Mountain region. "Therefore the employees implementing those policies with that guidance cannot fairly be held responsible for the result." Although the report acknowledged the "questionable judgment" of the five Park Service officials directly involved in the incident, it recommended that no action be taken against them. Two officials retired following the fire, and the remaining three must receive further training in wildland fire management. Park Service officials at Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico accidentally started the blaze last May during a routine "prescribed burn." Prescribed burns clear away dry brush and timber and are periodically carried out by fire personnel in forests throughout the country to prevent out-of-control wildfires. Hot temperatures and strong winds fanned the fire's flames, and the blaze quickly spread across the state, destroying more than 47,000 acres and threatening the Energy Department's Los Alamos National Laboratory. After the Cerro Grande fire broke out, then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt placed a moratorium on prescribed burns. The moratorium was lifted last month. The report found that employees did not violate any agency regulations, but that several of the procedures in place for conducting prescribed burns were flawed. The investigators criticized the National Park Service for failing to fully implement a 1995 federal policy on managing wildland fires, which directed agencies to rewrite fire manuals, design new training courses for fire officials, revise the system for dispatching firefighting resources, and develop disaster preparedness plans. Since the Cerro Grande fire, the National Park Service has worked to improve fire management policies and cooperation with federal, state and local agencies. The agency has put new risk assessment measures in place, developed a checklist for conducting prescribed burns, and provided more training on fire management policies.