NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
                           MORNING REPORT


To:         All National Park Service Areas and Offices

From:       Division of Ranger Activities, Washington Office

Day/Date:   Friday, March 23, 2001

INCIDENTS

01-100 - Cuyahoga Valley NP (OH) - Explosive Device

An explosive device of unknown type was triggered inside a rural 
mailbox located at the park dormitory on Ira Road in the park's South 
District during the night of March 20th-21st. The explosion completely 
destroyed the box, sending parts of it up to 90 feet away. The U.S. 
Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) has been notified and has expressed 
a high interest in conducting a joint investigation. A USPIS 
explosives expert will be meeting with the district ranger to process 
the evidence collected. This area of the state, including the park, 
has a history of detonation of explosive devices. In the past, 
explosives have been detonated in the park in mailboxes, garbage cans 
and remote restrooms, but there haven't been any such incidents for 
several years. There have been no injuries associated with these 
park-related incidents to date. Ranger Lois Neff is serving as the 
lead investigator. [Dale Silvis, SDR, CUVA, 3/22]

FIRE MANAGEMENT

National Fire Plan

No new information. Please check the NPS Fire Management Program 
Center web page (www.fire.nps.gov) for further information on fire 
plan projects.

Park Fires

No fires reported.

OPERATIONAL NOTES

Wayside Exhibit Alert - Fireform Porcelain, Inc., of Santa Rosa, 
California, producer of porcelain exhibit and wayside panels, has gone 
out of business. At this moment, two Harpers Ferry Center wayside 
exhibit employees are retrieving and inventorying HFC work currently 
at this contractor and shipping it back to Harpers Ferry. They have 
also come upon approximately 50 independently-produced park jobs that 
exist primarily as films packages. They are shipping all these jobs 
back to Harpers Ferry Center, where the packages will be sorted, 
repackaged, and shipped to the individual parks. If you know that your 
park had work at Fireform, please contact either Bruce Kaiser, 
304-535-6436, or Susan Haines, 304-535-6033. It will probably take at 
least three weeks to get the final packages to the parks. [Gary 
Cummins, Manager, HFC]

Ranger Activities Division Email Problem - If you sent an email 
message between February 16th and March 21st to Randy Coffman, new RAD 
program manager for EMS, SAR and uniforms, please resend your message. 
All messages to him during that period were lost in the email system 
while he was transitioning from Kings Canyon NP to Ranger Activities. 
[Dennis Burnett, Acting CR, RAD/WASO]

PARKS AND PEOPLE

Shenandoah NP (VA) - The park is offering six detail opportunities 
over the next six months (depending on funding) for GS-5, 7 or 9 
protection rangers from small and mid-sized parks within Northeast 
Region who are seeking to enhance their field skills and experience in 
a wide range of law enforcement and emergency incidents. Detailees 
will be under the direct supervision of a field supervisor. An 
evaluation will be provided at the end of the detail. A lack of 
experience in complex law enforcement and emergency services incidents 
has been identified by DOI as a material weakness for ranger programs 
in our small and mid-sized parks. In concert with recommendations by 
the IACP report on law enforcement in the NPS and suggestions from 
women in law enforcement within NER, the region has emphasized the 
importance of providing training opportunities for field rangers that 
will help them gain experience in the operational aspects of their 
jobs. The details are from April 29th to June 9th, from June 10th to 
August 4th, and from August 5th to September 29th. Base salary will be 
paid by benefiting account (no backfill available); lodging, per diem 
and overtime will be covered by Shenandoah NP. Nominations must be 
submitted to Deborah Burnett at NP-MARO by April 3rd. Call 
215-597-9153 for the nomination form; contact the park at 540-999-3407 
for further information. [Ginny Rousseau, CR, SHEN]

FOOTNOTE

Department of Mea Culpas: Alert readers have spotted a couple of 
pretty striking typos in recent editions of the Morning Report. The 
most recent was a passage in yesterday's report on the annual 
moose-wolf winter study at Isle Royale which referred to a pine marten 
as a bird. That error occurred because of a sudden inflow of editorial 
fog which caused the pine marten (Martes americana),  a card-carrying 
member of the mammal family, to mysteriously metamorphize into a 
purple martin (Progne subis), still a bird when last we looked. This 
was not the fault of submitter Jack Oelfke, chief of natural resource 
management at ISRO. Nor was the typo in the incident report from Organ 
Pipe Cactus NP in the March 8th edition of the Morning Report the 
responsibility of that report's author, chief ranger Dale Thompson. It 
noted that rangers had tracked a group of drug smugglers "to a camp 
500 years west" of the point where they'd dropped their bundles. This, 
of course, was supposed to be yards. Alas, this isn't the first time 
that a typo of this variety has appeared in the Morning Report. Some 
time ago, an incident report noted that a person had "wandered for 50 
years," which prompted one wit to suggest that the person in question 
had been confused with Moses. We regret the errors and will strive not 
to make any more typographical misteaks. 

                            *  *  *  *  *

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address requests pertaining to receipt of the Morning Report to your 
servicing hub coordinator.  The Morning Report is also available on 
the web at http://www.nps.gov/morningreport

Prepared by the Division of Ranger Activities, WASO, with the 
cooperation and support of Delaware Water Gap NRA.

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