Thirtymile forest fire -- has announced that she will retire at the end of March. Linda Goodman, 55, began her career 34 years ago on the Olympic National Forest in Washington State as a secretary.She has worked on five different National Forests in the Pacific Northwest. Before becoming the Regional Forester, Linda was the Deputy Regional Forester in Region 6, and served as Acting Chief of Staff for the Forest Service in Washington, DC.
She represented the Chief of the Forest Service in meetings with the Department of Agriculture, other federal, state and local agencies, as well as with external partners.
Linda was also the Director for the Forest Service Job Corps Centers.
Linda spent more than five years as the top official at th
e Forest Service's Northwest headquarters in Portland.After the Thirtymile forest fire in 2001 which killed four Forest Service firefighters,
Goodman decided it was inappropriate to fire incident commander Ellreese Daniels, according to firefighting author John Mac-Lean. In his book, "The
Thirty-mile Fire," MacLean quotes Goodman as saying that
"The termination would not have been appropriate because the Forest Service was responsible for allowing him to rise through the ranks"
MacLean wrote that the Forest Service had promoted Daniels even though his limited abilities were very well known.
Interviews with Forest Service firefighters who battled the Thirty Mile fire point to a chain of mishaps and mistakes that possibly began the night before and then multiplied on a hot afternoon in a canyon choked with drought-cured fuel.
Daniels was the fire incident commander and the government has needed a scapegoat and now He faces 10 felony counts including involuntary manslaughter at his trial in U.S. District Court in Spokane later this year.
Goodman attended the public memorial service at the SunDome that was held for all four wildland firefighters -- Tom Craven, 30; Karen FitzPatrick, 18; Devin Weaver, 21; and Jessica Johnson, 19, fought wildfire and died.
In a letter to employees announcing her retirement earlier this month, Goodman said that it
"felt like the right time to slip away."
"I feel good about where our region is and where we are heading," Goodman wrote, according to a Forest Service news release. "Together we have made the region a good investment and we remain
focused on the land."
L.C.E.S
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