Daugaard lapses result in wildfire outbreak

Recall 2011 when South Dakota's current reactionary governor ignored threats of flooding in the Missouri River basin and in 2013 a forecast blizzard killed tens of thousands of livestock and how during the aftermath the red state executive blithely applied for federal disaster relief.

Fire officials say it could take four to five days to totally gain control of a fire burning in the West Short Pines area of Harding County. The Great Plains Fire Information office reports the Sheep Draw Fire has burned approximately 5,600 acres as of Sunday evening. Today, a Type 3 Incident team assumed command of the fire. Among the first priorities were to order two helicopters from the South Dakota National Guard to make water drops in areas of rugged terrain. [KBHB Radio]

600 years ago 20 million bison migrating north would be cropping those grasses ahead of Spring thunderstorms while people following them gathered dry dung to fuel campfires.

Prescriptive fires should have been set weeks ago but South Dakota, suffering repeated leadership lapses, now faces red flag conditions settling over the state.

Joe Lowe called Governor Dennis Daugaard incompetent and uninterested in governing.

South Dakota's current governor says he's a conservative; yet, he has begged for billions from the Obama administration. His predecessor's office where he was lieutenant governor as well as his current bureaucracy have trafficked Native kids, exploited the federal EB-5 green card scam, are quietly expanding a Medicaid safety net for, and giving raises to, those not yet voting for his party.

Lowe obviously believed that South Dakota's governor is not taking the ecological collapse taking place on the Black Hills seriously enough.

Wildland fire has been a major part of Bill Gabbert’s life for several decades. After growing up in the south, he migrated to southern California where he lived for 20 years, working as a wildland firefighter. Later he took his affinity for firefighting to Indiana and eventually the Black Hills of South Dakota where he was the Fire Management Officer for a group of seven national parks. Today he is the creator and owner of WildfireToday.com and Sagacity Wildfire Services and serves as an expert witness in wildland fire. 

Below we hear from Joe Lowe, a former Director of the South Dakota Division of Wildfire Suppression and Type 2 Incident Commander of Rocky Mountain Incident Management Team C. Currently Joe is the owner of the Reflections of South Dakota Gallery in Rapid City. [Wildfire Today]

Gabbert penned a vivid sketch of Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Joe Lowe. Here's a snip:

Governor Bill Janklow, always a hands-on governor, was bewildered and flabbergasted by the fires and in many ways interfered with the Incident Commanders (your’s truly included) which at times created serious safety problems. On the Jasper Fire the Type 1 Incident Commander placed a resource order for U.S. Marshals who stood by at the Incident Command Post ready to put a halt to any actions by state employees that put firefighters in danger, such as setting backfires and running dozers out ahead of the fire without coordinating with the Incident Commander or the Incident Management Team. The next year Governor Janklow created the Division of Wildland Fire Suppression and hired Mr. Lowe to run the agency.

Read it all here.

Having been defeated in the Democratic gubernatorial primary by state representative, Susan Wismer, Mr. Lowe is now vice-chair of the South Dakota Democratic Party.

Why South Dakota retains Jim Strain as a fire boss remains a mystery.

An honest At-large US Representative would be calling out such unscrupulous behavior by the state's executive.

South Dakota deserves better.