Lincoln Co. fire chiefs want Gov. Kevin Stitt to reconsider decision to fire forestry service director

Fire chiefs in Lincoln County signed and released a letter over the weekend calling on Governor Stitt to reconsider his decision to fire Forestry Service Director Mark Goeller. 

The letter, which expressed frustration and disappointment, had 13 signatures. 

“There's no way that anybody could have known where those fires were going to start and when, so to single out one individual and hold him responsible for an unprecedented historical event, I think is wrong,” said Wellston Fire Chief Todd Beesly. 

On Monday, Governor Stitt released a statement “setting the record straight” on the Forestry Service. 

In the statement, Gov. Stitt accused Goeller of only deploying half of the resources available on March 14, which Goeller denied in a Facebook post two weeks ago. 

In the post, he said “nothing was held back” on the day of the wildfires. 

Beesly said deploying 100% of the available resources isn’t realistic. 

“We had to keep personnel and equipment here,” Beesly explained. 

He shared that his fire department, like most others, left a rig and personnel behind in case it was needed elsewhere. 

“We didn’t empty our house that night. We have an obligation to our own community that we had to protect,” Beesly added. 

He said it was also too windy to deploy firefighting aircraft. 

"So, you take the guy at the forestry service with 40 years of forestry experience and at least a decade leading that department -- that's the guy you want sitting at that table when you go sit down and try to figure out, 'OK maybe we can do this differently next time,'" Beesly suggested. 

The governor called on the secretaries of Agriculture and Public Safety to create a report describing where the department’s response failed and what can be done to improve the response in the future. 

Gov. Stitt said the report should be finished within the week.