The response to the 2002 fire season's fatal aircraft accidents, the USDA Forest Service and USDI Bureau of Land Management (BLM) jointly established an independent, five-member Blue Ribbon Commission to identify essential information for planning a safe and effective future aviation program. On August 15, 2002, the Chief of the Forest Service and Director of the BLM asked the panel to identify weaknesses and fail points in the current aviation program, focusing on safety, operational effectiveness, costs, sustainability, and strategic guidance. Assuming an integrated approach, the agencies tasked the panel to address these five areas as they relate to the operation and supervision of air tankers, lead planes and air supervision modules, helicopters, and air attack platforms. The massive amount of material and brief time for analysis forced the panel to address, for the most part, only major considerations. Possibly the single largest challenge now facing leaders of these federal agencies is to foster cooperation and collaboration among working-level staffs, contractors, and states to raise the standards of aerial wildland firefighting in the United States. This report presents eight key findings, which the panel believes are critical for planning a safe and effective future firefighting aviation program. The panel relied significantly on the knowledge, experience, and judgment of its members to develop its findings, which are strong inferences rather than deduced certainties. The panel's mandate was to identify problems, not advocate solutions or make recommendations.


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