In a statement sent to reporters Tuesday, the governor accused the agency of obfuscation. He did seem to tacitly acknowledge that numbers his office turned over the day before were incorrect by virtue of providing different numbers in Tuesday's statement.
Oklahoma's Forestry Services did, in fact, deploy its resources during the March 14 fire event. But Stitt says forestry officials did not deploy them correctly.
He points to a map that shows where firefighting assets were deployed during the statewide spate of fires that claimed four lives, scorched more than 100,000 acres and destroyed more than 500 homes, including one owned by the governor.
"This map shows a failure by Forestry to triage the fires," Stitt's office said in the news release. "They had 49 firefighting personnel fighting fires on 92,593 acres and 47 firefighting personnel fighting fires on 2,320 acres."
Those 47 firefighting personnel were located in a part of Eastern Oklahoma known as the Oklahoma Forestry Services Fire Protection Area. The rest were spread across the rest of the state, which has fewer densely forested areas.
Stitt hasn't wavered in his criticism of the Forestry Services' response over the past few weeks, since he announced the resignation of Oklahoma Forester and Director of the Forestry Services Mark Goeller. Last week, Stitt acknowledged that Goeller stepped down at the governor's request.
Stitt has now suspended more Forestry Services employees, and he said in an interview with News9 Tuesday that more Forestry officials have been fired.
"We had to fire a couple more people at the top level of Forestry, because it was insubordination to Blayne Arthur," Stitt said in the interview. "She was trying to get answers."
The identities of the fired personnel are unconfirmed, but one is reportedly the Forestry Services' public information officer, whose duties include informing the public about the division's work and answering media requests from journalists.
The unavailability of a public information officer has made it difficult for KOSU to confirm the governor's statements this week or retrieve emerging details about the Forestry Services' fire response.
A spokesperson for the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry said it does not comment on personnel matters. The spokesperson did not respond to questions about acts of insubordination from the Forestry Services; neither has the governor's office.
Secretary of Agriculture Blayne Arthur did offer the following statement:
"Protecting life and personal property from wildland fire will continue to be a priority in the state of Oklahoma," she said in the statement. "As stewards of taxpayer dollars, it is incumbent upon state agencies to perform after action reviews to make certain we are doing the very best job we can with resources available."
Arthur and Secretary of Public Health Tricia Everest will head Stitt's new Wildland Fire Response Working Group. They'll be joined by first responders, local emergency management officials, firefighters, researchers, industry people and other "community stakeholders."
The group will convene sometime within the next 30 days to develop recommendations for the governor and lawmakers.
This report was produced by the Oklahoma Public Media Exchange, a collaboration of public media organizations. Help support collaborative journalism by donating at the link at the top of this webpage.
