Politics
California firefighting aircraft stymied by U.S. Forest Service policy, local chiefs say
An aerial firefighting task force has been thwarted — and sometimes grounded — by a new interpretation of a U.S. Forest Service policy that prohibits contractors from providing flight supervision over federal lands, according to Southern California fire chiefs.
“I don’t understand why they’ve chosen this time to reinterpret this longstanding procedure,” said Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone. “Why are they moving the goalposts now, during fire season? The timing couldn’t be worse.”
The dispute is the latest to have local fire authorities at odds with the Forest Service amid a punishing season that’s seen more than a million acres of land burn across the state. Some county chiefs have also spoken out about Forest Service staffing shortages they say resulted in delayed federal responses to recent fires, including the Airport fire that destroyed homes in Orange and Riverside counties.
Orange County Fire Authority Chief Brian Fennessy has written to Congress requesting an investigation into the issue.
“This policy application defies common sense at a time when we all know wildfire is, if not the worst threat to public safety in the state of California and throughout the West, pretty close to the top,” he said.
The Forest Service said the policy is a longstanding business rule that applies to aviation operations nationwide. “We had a lack of clarity on the policy, so some people were using it inappropriately,” said Adrienne Freeman, an agency spokesperson.
At the heart of the dispute is the Quick Reaction Force, a 24/7 aerial task force staffed by the fire departments of Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties. Its fleet consists of three night-flying helitankers, a mobile base that can mix 18,000 gallons of retardant per hour and an intelligence helicopter that is typically staffed by pilots under contract with the Orange County Fire Authority who manage the airspace and tell the other helicopters where to make drops.
The task force has been operating for several years without issue. But in July, the local agencies received word from the Forest Service that contractors could no longer provide aerial supervision over fires burning on federal land. When the QRF is deployed to these fires, it generally must be overseen by an aerial supervisor who is an agency employee.
The Forest Service has 11 aircraft capable of performing this supervision in California, but only one — an airplane — can do so at night, Freeman said. That plane is at times unavailable because it’s already deployed, has logged too many flight hours, needs to refuel or requires repairs or maintenance.
“As a result of that, we’ve had to pull off of some fires that were threatening communities,” Fennessy said.
For instance, as the task force fought the Bridge fire the afternoon of Sept. 11, the Forest Service airplane supervising the effort, AA-52, had to return to base, according to Fennessy and a written statement provided by Ken Craw, an aerial supervisor who was flying Copter-76 under contract with the Orange County Fire Authority.
Rather than call in Copter-76 to relieve the plane as supervisor, all air operations — six helicopters and two water scoping air tankers — were shut down until another Forest Service plane could arrive a short time later, Craw wrote.
“In my opinion the choice of AA-52 to shut down the aerial firefighting operations instead of using Copter-76 put the public and firefighters at risk, and reduced the efficiency of the efforts to contain the Bridge Fire,” he wrote.
A similar situation resulted in a two-hour delay in QRF helicopters dropping retardant on the Fork fire in the Angeles National Forest on July 19, Fennessy said. Helicopters also were released from the Borel fire in the Sequoia National Forest the night of July 28, even though they had hours of flight time left, he said.
Fennessy and other Southern California fire chiefs have met and exchanged letters with Region 5 Director Jaimie Gamboa, sharing their concerns.
The requirement that an agency employee supervise night operations is impractical when that employee is flying a plane, which circles thousands of feet above helicopters and has limited visibility into what’s going on below, some of the county chiefs said.
“The helicopter coordinator position is more beneficial during nighttime helicopter operations than a fixed-wing aerial supervision platform that’s way too high above the fire,” said Marrone, who was previously in charge of the county’s air operations.
Robert Garcia, fire chief of the Angeles National Forest, has called on the QRF many times, as he has just one night-flying helicopter — the Forest Service’s only night-flying helicopter in the nation, he said.
Garcia said the Forest Service plane can provide adequate nighttime supervision to helicopters because it has technology on board to monitor the effectiveness of drops.
Still, he said, he’s expressed concerns about the policy interpretation to others in the Forest Service because of his forest’s reliance on the QRF intelligence helicopter to provide relief when the Forest Service plane is unavailable.
“I think it’s worth taking a hard look at this policy, because the QRF is really, to my knowledge, a singular example of this particular scenario,” he said. “But the consequences are high.”
The Forest Service may deviate from the policy when it’s in a unified command, or if there’s imminent threat to life or property, he said. Garcia has done so at least two or three times since July, enabling him to use the QRF helicopter for aerial supervision. Such supervision is needed only if more than two aircraft are flying over a fire, he added.
Garcia acknowledged that confusion over the new policy interpretation has at times resulted in some delays in decision-making, but said that hasn’t affected the outcome of any fires in Angeles National Forest. The probability of success in keeping the Bridge fire small was low from the start because of hot, dry conditions and steep, rugged terrain that hadn’t burned in more than 100 years, and the Fork fire was contained relatively quickly at 301 acres, he said.
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection also prohibits the use of contractors as aerial supervisors, a policy that was formalized this year but was in practice for a couple years before that, said Nick Schuler, deputy director of communications for Cal Fire.
But that hasn’t posed as much of an issue to the QRF because Cal Fire has agreements with Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties for them to provide initial attack fire suppression in many areas where the task force does its night flying work, Fennessy said. As a result, the counties dictate operations within those areas, he said.
The timing of the Forest Service’s change in policy interpretation has left him scratching his head. The contract pilots are “the best of the best,” with all the appropriate training and qualifications, and no one has raised safety concerns about them, Fennessy said.
He wonders whether the shift was retaliation for a 2022 60 Minutes episode in which he said the Forest Service was slow to use the QRF to fight the Caldor fire in Northern California and only greenlighted its use when he threatened to take the helicopters back home.
“It caused a lot of tension between the agencies — L.A., Ventura, Orange — and the Forest Service,” Fennessy said. “That’s the only thing I can think of because why now, years into this?”
Freeman of the Forest Service vigorously disputed that allegation. “No one gave that a thought, and we continue not to,” she said.
The Forest Service has been working to beef up its night flying operations, including by changing policy in Region 5 so that its employees can fly in contract aircraft to gain experience in nighttime aerial supervision, she said.
“We have worked incredibly hard to try to get to a place where we can utilize the QRF as well as all the resources in these counties,” she said. “This shouldn’t be about who has what. This is about trying to figure out ways to work together.”
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is leveling a stunning accusation at Vice President JD Vance amid the national furor over this week’s fatal shooting in Minnesota involving an ICE agent.
“I understand that Vice President Vance believes that shooting a young mother of three in the face three times is an acceptable America that he wants to live in, and I do not,” the four-term federal lawmaker from New York and progressive champion argued as she answered questions on Friday on Capitol Hill from Fox News and other news organizations.
Ocasio-Cortez spoke in the wake of Wednesday’s shooting death of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good after she confronted ICE agents from inside her car in Minneapolis.
RENEE NICOLE GOOD PART OF ‘ICE WATCH’ GROUP, DHS SOURCES SAY
Members of law enforcement work the scene following a suspected shooting by an ICE agent during federal operations on January 7, 2026, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
Video of the incident instantly went viral, and while Democrats have heavily criticized the shooting, the Trump administration is vocally defending the actions of the ICE agent.
HEAD HERE FOR LIVE FOX NEWS UPDATES ON THE ICE SHOOTING IN MINNESOTA
Vance, at a White House briefing on Thursday, charged that “this was an attack on federal law enforcement. This was an attack on law and order.”
“That woman was there to interfere with a legitimate law enforcement operation,” the vice president added. “The president stands with ICE, I stand with ICE, we stand with all of our law enforcement officers.”
And Vance claimed Good was “brainwashed” and suggested she was connected to a “broader, left-wing network.”
Federal sources told Fox News on Friday that Good, who was a mother of three, worked as a Minneapolis-based immigration activist serving as a member of “ICE Watch.”
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
Ocasio-Cortez, in responding to Vance’s comments, said, “That is a fundamental difference between Vice President Vance and I. I do not believe that the American people should be assassinated in the street.”
But a spokesperson for the vice president, responding to Ocasio-Cortez’s accusation, told Fox News Digital, “On National Law Enforcement Appreciation Day, AOC made it clear she thinks that radical leftists should be able to mow down ICE officials in broad daylight. She should be ashamed of herself. The Vice President stands with ICE and the brave men and women of law enforcement, and so do the American people.”
In Springfield, Ill., in 1838, a young Abraham Lincoln delivered a powerful speech decrying the “ravages of mob law” throughout the land. Lincoln warned, in eerily prescient fashion, that the spread of a then-ascendant “mobocratic spirit” threatened to sever the “attachment of the People” to their fellow countrymen and their nation. Lincoln’s opposition to anarchy of any kind was absolute and clarion: “There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.”
Unfortunately, it seems that every few years, Americans must be reminded anew of Lincoln’s wisdom. This week’s lethal Immigration and Customs Enforcement standoff in the Twin Cities is but the latest instance of a years-long baleful trend.
On Wednesday, a 37-year-old stay-at-home mom, Renee Nicole Good, was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. Her ex-husband said she and her partner encountered ICE agents after dropping off Good’s 6-year-old at school. The federal government has called Good’s encounter “an act of domestic terrorism” and said the agent shot in self-defense.
Suffice it to say Minnesota’s Democratic establishment does not see it this way.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey responded to the deployment of 2,000 immigration agents in the area and the deadly encounter by telling ICE to “get the f— out” of Minnesota, while Gov. Tim Walz called the shooting “totally predictable” and “totally avoidable.” Frey, who was also mayor during the mayhem after George Floyd’s murder by city police in 2020, has lent succor to the anti-ICE provocateurs, seemingly encouraging them to make Good a Floyd-like martyr. As for Walz, he’s right that this tragedy was eminently “avoidable” — but not only for the reasons he thinks. If the Biden-Harris administration hadn’t allowed unvetted immigrants to remain in the country without legal status and if Walz’s administration hadn’t moved too slowly in its investigations of hundreds of Minnesotans — of mixed immigration status — defrauding taxpayers to the tune of billions of dollars, ICE never would have embarked on this particular operation.
National Democrats took the rage even further. Following the fateful shooting, the Democratic Party’s official X feed promptly tweeted, without any morsel of nuance, that “ICE shot and killed a woman on camera.” This sort of irresponsible fear-mongering already may have prompted a crazed activist to shoot three detainees at an ICE facility in Dallas last September while targeting officers; similar dehumanizing rhetoric about the National Guard perhaps also played a role in November’s lethal shooting of a soldier in Washington, D.C.
Liberals and open-border activists play with fire when they so casually compare ICE, as Walz previously has, to a “modern-day Gestapo.” The fact is, ICE is not the Gestapo, Donald Trump is not Hitler, and Charlie Kirk was not a goose-stepping brownshirt. To pretend otherwise is to deprive words of meaning and to live in the theater of the absurd.
But as dangerous as this rhetoric is for officers and agents, it is the moral blackmail and “mobocratic spirit” of it all that is even more harmful to the rule of law.
The implicit threat of all “sanctuary” jurisdictions, whose resistance to aiding federal law enforcement smacks of John C. Calhoun-style antebellum “nullification,” is to tell the feds not to operate and enforce federal law in a certain area — or else. The result is crass lawlessness, Mafia-esque shakedown artistry and a fetid neo-confederate stench combined in one dystopian package.
The truth is that swaths of the activist left now engage in these sorts of threats as a matter of course. In 2020, the left’s months-long rioting following the death of Floyd led to upward of $2 billion in insurance claims. In 2021, they threatened the same rioting unless Derek Chauvin, the officer who infamously kneeled on Floyd’s neck, was found guilty of murder (which he was, twice). In 2022, following the unprecedented (and still unsolved) leak of the draft majority opinion in the Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court case, abortion-rights activists protested outside many of the right-leaning justices’ homes, perhaps hoping to induce them to change their minds and flip their votes. And now, ICE agents throughout the country face threats of violence — egged on by local Democratic leaders — simply for enforcing federal law.
In “The Godfather,” Luca Brasi referred to this sort of thuggery as making someone an offer that he can’t refuse. We might also think of it as Lincoln’s dreaded “ravages of mob law.”
Regardless, a free republic cannot long endure like this. The rule of law cannot be held hostage to the histrionic temper tantrums of a radical ideological flank. The law must be enforced solemnly, without fear or favor. There can be no overarching blackmail lurking in the background — no Sword of Damocles hovering over the heads of a free people, ready to crash down on us all if a certain select few do not get their way.
The proper recourse for changing immigration law — or any federal law — is to lobby Congress to do so, or to make a case in federal court. The ginned-up martyrdom complex that leads some to take matters into their own hands is a recipe for personal and national ruination. There is nothing good down that road — only death, despair and mobocracy.
Josh Hammer’s latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. X: @josh_hammer
Insights
L.A. Times Insights delivers AI-generated analysis on Voices content to offer all points of view. Insights does not appear on any news articles.
Viewpoint
Perspectives
The following AI-generated content is powered by Perplexity. The Los Angeles Times editorial staff does not create or edit the content.
Ideas expressed in the piece
- Democrats and activist left are perpetuating a dangerous “mobocratic spirit” similar to the mob law that Lincoln warned against in 1838, which threatens the rule of law and national unity[1]
- The federal government’s characterization of the incident as self-defense by an ICE agent is appropriate, while local Democratic leaders are irresponsibly encouraging anti-ICE protesters to view Good as a martyr figure like George Floyd[1]
- Dehumanizing rhetoric comparing ICE to the Gestapo is reckless fear-mongering that has inspired actual violence, including a shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas and the fatal shooting of a National Guard soldier[1]
- The shooting was “avoidable” not because of ICE’s presence, but because the Biden-Harris administration allowed undocumented immigrants to remain in the country without legal status and state authorities moved too slowly investigating immigrant fraud[1]
- Sanctuary jurisdictions that resist federal law enforcement represent neo-confederate “nullification” and constitute crass lawlessness and Mafia-style extortion, effectively telling federal agents they cannot enforce the law or face consequences[1]
- The activist left employs threats of violence as systematic blackmail, evidenced by 2020 riots following Floyd’s death, threats surrounding the Chauvin trial, protests at justices’ homes during the abortion debate, and now threats against ICE agents[1]
- Changing immigration policy must occur through Congress or federal courts, not through mob rule and “ginned-up martyrdom complexes” that lead to personal and national ruination[1]
Different views on the topic
- Community members who knew Good rejected characterizations of her as a domestic terrorist, with her mother describing her as “one of the kindest people I’ve ever known,” “extremely compassionate,” and someone “who has taken care of people all her life”[1]
- Vigil speakers and attendees portrayed Good as peacefully present to watch the situation and protect her neighbors, with an organizer stating “She was peaceful; she did the right thing” and “She died because she loved her neighbors”[1]
- A speaker identified only as Noah explicitly rejected the federal government’s domestic terrorism characterization, saying Good was present “to watch the terrorists,” not participate in terrorism[1]
- Neighbors described Good as a loving mother and warm family member who was an award-winning poet and positive community presence, suggesting her presence during the incident reflected civic concern rather than radicalism[1]
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he plans to meet with Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado in Washington next week.
During an appearance on Fox News’ “Hannity,” Trump was asked if he intends to meet with Machado after the U.S. struck Venezuela and captured its president, Nicolás Maduro.
“Well, I understand she’s coming in next week sometime, and I look forward to saying hello to her,” Trump said.
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado waves a national flag during a protest called by the opposition on the eve of the presidential inauguration, in Caracas on January 9, 2025. (JUAN BARRETO/AFP via Getty Images)
This will be Trump’s first meeting with Machado, who the U.S. president stated “doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country” to lead.
According to reports, Trump’s refusal to support Machado was linked to her accepting the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, which Trump believed he deserved.
But Trump later told NBC News that while he believed Machado should not have won the award, her acceptance of the prize had “nothing to do with my decision” about the prospect of her leading Venezuela.
Virginia farmer protects Secretariat’s playground from solar farms, data centers
Wisconsin teen who killed prison guard in fistfight pleads guilty but claims mental illness
West Virginia set to welcome No. 22 Kansas – WV MetroNews
Property Tax Relief vs. Public Services: Weed & Pest Districts Enter the Debate
Rumors are swirling about Venezuela holding $60 billion in Bitcoin—but crypto experts are skeptical | Fortune
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Video: ‘It Didn’t Have to Happen This Way:’ U.Va. Faculty Call for Review of Police Response to Protests
AOC accuses Vance of believing ‘American people should be assassinated in the street’
Mercosur: How Macron’s domestic weakness undercut his Brussels clout
National Park Service will void passes with stickers over Trump’s face
Trump plans to meet with Venezuela opposition leader Maria Corina Machado next week
Trump says meeting Iran’s ‘Crown Prince’ Pahlavi would not be appropriate
-
Detroit, MI6 days ago2 hospitalized after shooting on Lodge Freeway in Detroit
-
Technology3 days agoPower bank feature creep is out of control
-
Dallas, TX4 days agoDefensive coordinator candidates who could improve Cowboys’ brutal secondary in 2026
-
Health5 days agoViral New Year reset routine is helping people adopt healthier habits
-
Iowa3 days agoPat McAfee praises Audi Crooks, plays hype song for Iowa State star
-
Nebraska2 days agoOregon State LB transfer Dexter Foster commits to Nebraska
-
Nebraska3 days agoNebraska-based pizza chain Godfather’s Pizza is set to open a new location in Queen Creek
-
Entertainment2 days agoSpotify digs in on podcasts with new Hollywood studios