Wildland Suppression Report Card
Independent grades of how federal wildfire responses were fought, scored on nine elements from the national leader's intent to post-fire recovery, and measured against the written 2026 direction to keep fires small.
Report cards
Grades: A = Exemplary · B = Strong execution · C = Acceptable but needs improvement · D = Significant shortfalls · F = Unacceptable · I = Incomplete.
Little Giant Fire
The California Complex Incident Management Team organized this fire around a "big box" roughly 840 square miles in size, reaching to and across the Columbia River, in direct contradiction of the Chiefs' written 2026 direction to attack fires aggressively and keep them small. Within days of local officials, the Alliance, and others raising the alarm, Deputy Chief Sarah Fisher, Chief Brian Fennessy, and Chief Tom Schultz each went to the incident command post in person. The Chief said his briefing was in line with his earlier direction by the time he arrived on August 31. The weather then moderated, and the box was never burned. The grade reflects what was planned and what happened to the Entiat Valley before the correction; the correction itself is credited.
1Leader's Intent Alignment
Chief Schultz and Chief Fennessy directed every team, in writing, to attack fires aggressively and keep them as small as possible. The team's August 28 strategic operations map organized three branches and roughly ten divisions around a ~538,000-acre perimeter far outside the fire. That is the opposite of the direction. The intent reached this incident only when the Chiefs delivered it in person, as reflected on subsequent mapping and IAPs.
2Incident Commander Objective-Setting
No Incident Action Plan and no WFDSS decision authorizing the box has been made available to the public; the map is the only statement of command intent on the record. The local fire district's evaluation of the first team assignment found no structure group in the IAP, priorities that did not match predicted fire behavior, and a rationale for priority ranking that "was never articulated." NIFC has hidden multiple years of data formerly available on NIFC.ftp, further degrading public understanding of and access to fire information on public lands. NWA expects NIFC to further veil current wildfire information in coming months, a blow to public transparency at a time when the public needs the best available information.
3Field-Level Understanding & Execution
Crews, engines, aircraft, and the county and state resources mobilized for structure defense did difficult, dangerous work in steep country through weeks of hot weather and held the line once the strategy turned to direct attack. The people carrying out orders are not the ones who earn a failing grade for what the orders said.
4Suppression Tactics & Strategy
Indirect strategy from the outset. The local evaluation documents the team ignoring proven containment lines pointed out by local resources, denying a branch's burnout request five days running, and missing "multiple opportunities to take action to keep this fire small." The August 28 box would have carried fire to and across the Columbia River, the strongest natural firebreak in the region, and through what is left of the Entiat watersheds following years of severe fires. Course correction after August 28–31 is credited; it does not change what was planned.
5Resources Expended
A lightning start estimated at five acres on July 15 became a 172,000-acre incident with thousands of structures threatened and, at peak, a state fire mobilization. The local evaluation ties lost containment opportunities directly to "significantly increased cost and burned acres." Final cost exceeds $100 million for suppression alone, not counting direct damages and post-fire damages from flooding and other causes.
6Off-Site & Community Impacts
Homes were lost in the Entiat Valley on the night of August 7. The fire district responsible for those homes was not notified by the team; it learned of the losses from a neighboring district. Sprinkler systems were in place but had not been run. Only Forest Service structures up-valley were wrapped. Level 3 evacuations, prolonged closures, and weeks of smoke followed.
7Post-Fire Recovery & BAER Response
Incomplete; the fire is not out. Flagged now: the August debris flows in Pope, Lake, and Silver Creeks are believed to have killed fish in the Entiat River from Pope Creek to the mouth, threatening ESA-listed Upper Columbia spring Chinook and steelhead runs that federal recovery plans and the Entiat Community Wildfire Protection Plan exist to protect. BAER performance will be graded when its work is public. Typically, BAER Team recommendations are comprehensive. Funding BAER Team recommendations is completely inadequate.
8Risk Management & Safety
Provisional. No firefighter fatalities are reported in the record reviewed; injury and near-miss data are not yet available to us. What was never explained to anyone is the risk trade-off of an 840-square-mile box: weeks of holding an enormous line, deliberately, in high fire season, against the short-term risk of direct attack on a far smaller perimeter.
9Truthful Presentation
The box was never disclosed to the public. No decision document or author was made available. The local fire chief reports being told structure protection work was complete when it was not. And when the Chief of the Forest Service arrived on August 31, he was briefed with no mention of the box that was on the team's own map three days earlier. The CIMTs remain opaque.
This is an initial report card: the fire is not over, cost and BAER data are not yet public, and elements 5, 7, and 8 will be revisited. NWA invites the agencies to correct the record wherever they hold information it could not see, beginning with the WFDSS decision for the August 28 box and the name of its author or agency administrator.
Seven Cabins Fire
This fire started with a tragedy: a medical transport plane crashed in the mountains near Ruidoso, killing all four people aboard, and the resulting fire burned nearly 32,000 acres over the next month. NWA graded the federal suppression effort on nine elements, from national policy down to the crews on the line. The short version: the firefighters did their jobs well, the agency was honest about the basics but not the hard calls, and one costly strategy decision in May made this fire much bigger than it needed to be, a decision the incoming command team then worked hard to correct.
1Leader's Intent Alignment
Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz told every forest, in writing, to keep new fires small. That message reached this fire as a talking point, not as a binding order with someone checking that the strategy actually matched it.
2Incident Commander Objective-Setting
The daily orders given to crews were clear and specific, with no confusion there. The problem was what they ordered: a strategy built around burning out containment lines rather than stopping the fire directly, which drifted from the "keep it small" instruction from the top.
3Field-Level Understanding & Execution
The firefighters on this incident did their jobs. They understood their assignments and carried them out safely and competently. When an order is questionable, the crews following it professionally are not the ones who earn a bad grade; that belongs to whoever wrote the order.
4Suppression Tactics & Strategy
A two-day burnout operation in late May grew the fire by roughly 7,000 acres, close to a third of its final size, when direct attack earlier in the fire's run was likely achievable. The team that took command afterward shifted to smaller, more disciplined tactics and helped push containment sharply higher: a real, well-handled course correction.
5Resources Expended
Over 1,000 personnel and multiple air tankers were put to good use overall. The exception: eight elite hotshot crews were assigned to expand the fire's containment lines rather than attack it directly, a costly use of the most highly trained resource in wildland fire.
6Off-Site & Community Impacts
Evacuations and forest closures were ultimately handled well, with good coordination between the incident team and local emergency officials. Public notice of the fire's fastest growth periods lagged behind what was actually happening on the ground.
7Post-Fire Recovery & BAER Response
The best mark on this report card. The Burned Area Emergency Response team completed its soil and watershed damage assessment quickly and professionally, exactly the standard every fire should meet.
8Risk Management & Safety
No firefighter injuries or unsafe conditions were reported during suppression operations, a real credit to the crews and safety officers involved. What was not explained publicly: the trade-off of burning more forest now against the risk of a bigger fire later.
9Truthful Presentation
Basic facts (acreage, containment, closures) were reported accurately and on schedule. The reasoning behind the big strategic decisions was not explained to the public at the time they were made.
NWA's Independent Fire Review Panel graded this incident using the public incident record (Incident Action Plans, InciWeb and NIFC situation reports, the Lincoln National Forest's closure and BAER releases, and contemporaneous news coverage), cross-checked against the U.S. Forest Service's and U.S. Wildland Fire Service's own stated 2026 commitment to aggressive, full suppression.
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