A firefighter from Minnesota died Friday while helping the United States Forest Service with a controlled burn in Idaho, officials say.
The Idaho Department of Lands (IDL) says Isabella Oscarson had been struck by a falling tree while assisting the U.S. Forest Service’s Tinker Bugs with a prescribed fire in the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests. She was evacuated from the scene and flown to a hospital in Grangeville, Idaho, where she later died.
Oscarson was a seasonal employee with the IDL.
“IDL extends its deepest sympathies to Isabella’s family and friends. This is a tragedy that hits the employees at Idaho Department of Lands and the broader wildland fire community extremely hard,” Dustin Miller, director of IDL, said. “We are heartbroken and doing everything we can to support her family and our staff during this difficult time.”
Idaho Gov. Brad Little ordered flags to be lowered to half-staff to honor Oscarson until the day following her memorial service.
“Idahoans are grieving the loss of Isabella Oscarson, a promising young woman whose life was cut far too short while serving the people of Idaho as a wildland firefighter. Her loss is felt deeply by the firefighting community and beyond,” Little said.
Information about a service for Oscarson has not yet been released.
Riley Moser is a digital producer who covers breaking news and feature stories for CBS Minnesota. Riley started her career at CBS Minnesota in June 2022 and earned an honorable mention for sports writing from the Iowa College Media Association the same year.
Wounded warriors are getting new Southern California veteran’s retreat for mountain getaways.
The Heroes Project
Former Hells Angel Tim Wayne Medvitz has had some big ideas in the past decade and a half. One is to use his mountaineering skills to take seriously injured military veterans on climbs up the world’s highest peaks. The Heroes Project charity he created after a motorcycle accident shattered his body and life has been doing this since 2009, even summiting Everest.
One of THP’s principal training grounds, the strikingly beautiful Mt. Baldy in Southern California, inspired the group’s latest effort, creating a veteran retreat center. This complex of cabins and recreational buildings will be built on United States Forest Service property in Icehouse Canyon, two miles from Mt. Baldy Village (and driving distance from Los Angeles).
Barring any unforeseen crises, the project will break ground in early 2024 and hopefully open in Fall 2025, Medvitz predicted, adding in an email, “It’s been a four year journey just to get the USFS to approve this project.”
Challenging Site
The group founder is undaunted by the property’s history of flooding and fire, or the namesake trail’s killer reputation. (The Los Angeles Times described it this way in a February 2, 2023 article: “That familiarity and easy access from a huge urban area have combined to give the mountain one of the worst records for death and injury in the U.S.. Since 2020, there have been more than 100 searches for missing hikers on Mt. Baldy, with six confirmed deaths, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.” British actor Julian Sands lost his life on that trail hiking solo last winter.
So far, none of those deaths, injuries or search and rescues have been associated with THP’s veteran training or volunteer fundraising events. (I participated* in the latter once in 2014, and found the Devil’s Backbone section of the trail aptly named; the hikespeak blog dubbed it “spine tingling” in an undated post.)
Medvitz, whose team has had to address dangerous conditions with THP’s climbs – including an avalanche and earthquake en route to a record-setting Everest summit by a Marine amputee – is not intimidated by Baldy’s physical (or development) challenges. He’s just plainly excited about bringing more vets in to enjoy the strikingly beautiful surroundings, each other’s company and new adventures to be planned there.
“After 10 years and thousands of hours of dreaming, drafting, designing, and negotiating, THP is proud to announce that effective, June 29th, 2023 the United States Forest Service special use permit is officially signed and in our hands!” his website proclaims. “Every detail of the VRC has been designed so that our veterans can disconnect from life’s everyday stresses and reconnect with the soldier/Marine that has been lost.” Given these new accommodations, the site notes, “We are able to offer temporary housing and a taste of the great outdoors, all part of our transformative experience.”
Resilience
“The only way to build a facility like this on USFS land would be to have an existing special use permit grandfathered in on the land,” Medvitz explained in his note. “The Old Icehouse resort had exactly that and needed to be brought back to life; we will do that in partnership with the USFS and with a great cause behind it. As far as floods and fire hazards are concerned, well, any mountain retreat will bring everything that mother nature throws at it,” he mused, then added that all of the Forest Service’s requirements for safety will be met. California’s wildfires have become more frequent and intense in recent years, including in Baldy’s home range, so resilience planning is a necessary precaution.
Wounded Warrior Housing
Assisting the relentless adventurer in constructing the new retreat center is Scott Youngren, a general contractor for Homes for Our Troops, another nonprofit organization serving combat veterans. Medvitz shared that the builder has created accessible homes for THP alumni as part of his HFOT work, so this new mini mountain compound will be a kind of homecoming for him – and them!
San Diego area Marine veteran and double amputee Julian Torres summited Mt. Kilimanjaro with the group and received an adaptive home from HFOT. He lives less than two hours from the new retreat.
The new center will include three cabins, two accommodating four guests and one accommodating two. There will also be tent camping spaces and a welcoming/programming center.
Building for this population needs to address a range of injuries, both seen and unseen, which Youngren’s experience with HFOT will help inform. These include limb loss, traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress. “Mt Baldy and the Baldy community has always delivered on everything needed to pull these vets out of their dark places,” Medvitz noted.
The mountain setting can be a boon to those suffering from PTS in particular, but potentially a challenge to those with mobility issues. “We will be ADA compliant,” Medvitz commented. TBI is considered a signature issue of the Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans, which have formed the core of his mountain climbers. “We do focus on primarily post 9/11 combat wounded vets, but we will broaden our veteran outreach in other categories once we’re up and running.”
Author’s Note
This article is part of a series I dedicate to military-related accommodations every Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day. You can read past stories in my November and May archives going back to 2020.
I noted* above that I participated in a fundraiser for The Heroes Project, which merits disclosure. I made two donations of $500 apiece, one in 2014 as part of its Climb for Heroes fundraiser and one the next year for a related documentary (as yet unreleased) about the Everest summit. I do not serve (and never have) in any official capacity with the group.
Aerial shooting of the cattle will take place from February 23 to February 26, according to the news release. The service told CNN via email that they would “lethally dispatch as many feral cattle as we are able to during this operation” and that “it is likely that additional operations, using lethal and non-lethal methods, will be necessary to eliminate the feral cattle population.”
The feral cattle have created problems in the Gila National Forest since the 1970s, when a rancher abandoned cattle on the Redstone Allotment within the Gila Wilderness, according to a memo from the Forest Service. The memo defined feral cattle as cattle that don’t have brands, ear tags, or other signs of ownership.
“These cattle have not been husbanded, cared for by private owners, or kept or raised on a ranch for several generations, and are thus not domesticated,” the service said in the memo.
The difficult terrain of the forest as well as the “wild, uncooperative nature of the animals” makes capturing the cattle alive challenging and dangerous for both the animals and humans involved, according to the memo.
According to the service, the problem posed by the untamed cattle is twofold. First, the cattle are aggressive towards humans. In the memo, the service said hikers in the Gila Wilderness have been charged by feral bulls.
Second, the herbivores’ intensive grazing habits have damaged the environment and harmed native species’ natural habitats, according to the memo. The cattle’s trampling and eroding stream banks have also damaged the water quality.
“This has been a difficult decision, but the lethal removal of feral cattle from the Gila Wilderness is necessary to protect public safety, threatened and endangered species habitats, water quality, and the natural character of the Gila Wilderness,” Gila National Forest Supervisor Camille Howes said in the news release.
“The feral cattle in the Gila Wilderness have been aggressive towards wilderness visitors, graze year-round, and trample stream banks and springs, causing erosion and sedimentation,” Howes continued. “This action will help restore the wilderness character of the Gila Wilderness enjoyed by visitors from across the country.”
Some cattle ranchers are concerned some of their branded cattle could have strayed into the Gila Wilderness over the past few years, according to the news release. The service said it is “committed to continued efforts toward collaborative solutions” and that it would work with ranchers to locate and remove their branded cattle.
