Wildfire Today reported on May 2 that a magazine published by members of al Qaeda has called for Western Muslims to wage war within the United States, urging them to engage in lone wolf attacks, including setting forest fires. The article gave detailed instructions on how to build an “ember bomb” in order to set wildfires in the United States and Australia, and specifically suggested Montana as a choice location. The magazine article led the national news programs for a couple of days. Here are some of the reactions that have surfaced in response.

Dr. Anthony Bergin of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute:

…But [Dr. Bergin] said Australian authorities had recently adopted more sophisticated approaches to firefighting, including surveillance and land clearing measures.

The article provides specific examples and statistics of devastating bushfires in NSW and Queensland. It does not mention the Black Saturday fires in Victoria in 2009.

The article talks up the devastation caused by fires and provides details about the best times of the year to start a fire in different parts of Australia.

The article says of past fires in Australia: ”These fires ruined the dry before the green, exhausted lives and properties, wiped out a lot of farms and houses, destroyed thousands of trees that are used in manufacturing and created an atmosphere of terror and panic.”

Montana’s Missoulian:

An al-Qaida threat to burn Western Montana’s forests hasn’t had the intended effect on Darby Marshal Larry Rose.

When the terrorist organization’s English-language magazine recently advised its readers to use forest fires to destabilize the United States, it used the fires of 2000 as an example — and said Western Montana was the ideal location for such an attack.

Specifically it recalled how in August 2000, “wildfires extended on the sides of a valley, south of Darby town. Six separated fires started and then met to form a massive fire that burnt down tens of houses.”

The magazine suggested using “ember bombs” to ignite forests, providing instructions for building trigger mechanisms and advice about the best weather conditions to promote big burns.

“My comment is the forests are pretty much all burnt up,” Rose said on Friday. “What more would they burn here?”

The fires of 2000 burned nearly 400,000 acres of the Bitterroot Valley, including much of the hillsides around Darby. Most were started by lightning during an extremely dry summer.

The idea that jihadist infiltrators might build upon their 9/11 World Trade Center destruction by torching trees hadn’t sparked much coffee-counter conversation, Rose said. It also hadn’t produced any alerts from the Department of Homeland Security for heightened vigilance.

The U.S. Forest Service:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, including the U.S Forest Service, works closely with its partners within the intelligence community, including both the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice on any terrorist threats, including threats of this nature,” said Forest Service spokesman Brandan Schulze. “We are asking Forest Service employees, law enforcement and the general public to continue to be vigilant for any signs of wildfires, and to report unusual circumstances or situations that seem out of the ordinary for outdoor recreation on all public lands.

A video from ABC News:

Thanks go out to Chris and Dick

A magazine published by members of al Qaeda has called for Western Muslims to wage war within the United States, urging them to engage in lone wolf attacks, including setting forest fires. According to ABC News, a recent issue of Inspire magazine has surfaced on jihadi forums with one article titled ”It Is of Your Freedom to Ignite a Firebomb”, which gives detailed instructions on how to build an “ember bomb” in a forest in the United States, and suggested Montana as a choice location due to the rapid population growth in forested areas.

In America, there are more houses built in the [countryside] than in the cities. It is difficult to choose a better place [than] in the valleys of Montana.

A previous issue of the magazine contained information on how to construct remote-controlled explosives, and helpfully listed the needed parts along with instructions and photos.

ABC News has been calling around today to find a wildfire expert who can be interviewed on camera for a piece they expect to be on Wednesday’s Good Morning America. One person they called was Dick Mangan, a past President of the International Association of Wildland Fire (IAWF), but ABC was not able to work out the logistics of quickly getting a camera crew to his house in Montana. The last we heard they found someone in the Sacramento area who works for CAL FIRE.

It’s odd, or maybe that is why ABC contacted Dick, because he wrote an article for the March/April 2005 issue of Wildfire, a magazine published by the IAWF, titled Terrorists in the Woods, about the potential for terrorists to set vegetation fires in wildland areas. In the article he mentioned that police and structural fire departments receive funding for the possibility of terror-related incidents, but the land management agencies receive little or nothing to plan for or prevent threats such as these.

Below is an excerpt from Dick’s 2005 article.

…The massive increases in the federal budget for protection from terrorism mostly have been sent to police and structural fire departments. But what about the threat of terrorist-caused wildland fires in our forests, community watersheds and wildland-urban interface? Who’s worried about that threat, what are they doing about it, and how much is being spent to fund the efforts to prevent it?

The history of fire as a tool of warfare is well-documented: Native Americans used fire against their enemies, both other tribes and the expanding Europeans; the Aboriginal people of Australia used fire to discourage the incursion of the British settlers onto their island. In World War II, the ]apanese launched “fire balloons” against the western United States. While largely unsuccessful, they started a few fires and killed six people in Oregon. The Palestinians in ihe latter half of the 20th century used fire to try to destroy Israel’s carefully planted pine plantations.

Now, as more and more folks are moving into the wildland-urban interface, the danger of fire as a weapon is even greater. Even under the best of circumstances – when a single ignition occurs under critical fire conditions – hundreds and thousands of citizens are threatened with entrapment, injury or death from rapidly spreading fires. Imagine if a small band of determined terrorists, with only some basic fire weather knowledge and fire behavior training decided to set multiple ignitions in some of our most vulnerable areas like heavily populated valley bottoms with limited egress/acceass and a heavy, dry fuel loading at the peak of the burning period?

There are many such areas around the world: in the foothills of Andalusia in Spain; outside of Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, and in numerous areas of the United States from Florida to the Pine Barrens of New York to the foothills surrounding Los Angeles. Even my own hometown of Missoula, Montana has areas that fit all the above criteria, and is surely at risk under the wrong combination of weather conditions and a committed terrorist with fire on the brain.

We contacted a spokesperson for the IAWF, Paula Nelson, about the reported threat of terrorist-arson, and she responded:

Wildfire threats and terrorist threats cross borders and require us all to be prepared and vigilant. Training and communicating with fellow firefighters, regardless of agency or country, is always worthwhile in improving our capabilities in both arenas. This is a cornerstone for the work IAWF does.

A firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service on Monday accepted a plea deal to serve two years in prison for starting a wildfire while he was on duty July 25, 2010 in southern California near Rancho Cucamonga (map). A trial was scheduled to begin Monday, but Daniel Mariano Madrigal, 26, and his attorney surprised San Bernardino County Deputy District Attorney Karen Khim with an offer to plead no contest and to serve two years. After some negotiation, the two sides agreed on the deal, which will probably result in Madrigal actually serving about 9 months, according to Christopher Lee, a spokesperson for the District Attorney’s office.

Prosecutors had alleged Madrigal “willfully, unlawfully and maliciously” set fire to forest land or caused it to burn.

Before the trial, Madrigal’s attorney, Salvador Silva, contended that the fire was an accident, according to an article in the Contra Costa Times:

The defendant was working that day and had driven his truck to an area east of the dam near a water tower to make a cell phone call. A cigarette he was smoking burned him, and he tossed it, according to the defense.

Madrigal looked for the cigarette in his truck, but he couldn’t find it. When he saw that a fire had started, the defense says Madrigal went back to the station. He and a captain drove a fire engine back to the fire and put it out.

Prosecutors say the fire burned about one-tenth of an acre, but Silva said the fire was much smaller.

Two men have been arrested and arraigned for starting the Eagle fire that burned 14,100 acres in northeastern San Diego County in southern California. Here is an excerpt from an article in the North County Times:

Less than an hour after finding a guard shack burned to the ground in the middle of a wildfire that would soon grow to 22 square miles, firefighters found a sport utility vehicle stuck in the road. Inside the truck, they found Keystone beer cans, a gas can and a lighter, according to court documents.

The truck was registered to the father of Jeremy Ortiz, one of two men who on Friday pleaded not guilty to aggravated arson, court documents state. Jeremy Ortiz and friend Jesse Durbin are accused of starting the Eagle fire on July 21.

Ortiz, 23, a member of the Los Coyotes Band of Cahuilla Indians, was arrested Thursday in a joint law enforcement operation on charges of aggravated arson and forest land arson, authorities said.

Durbin, 23 and also a tribal member, was already in the Vista jail on a vehicle theft charge when he was arrested in connection with setting the large fire. No one was injured in the blaze.

The two men were in a Vista courtroom Friday, where they pleaded not guilty to charges related to the blaze. They are each being held in lieu of $2 million bail.

If convicted of aggravated arson, each faces 10 years to life in prison, Deputy District Attorney Terri Perez said.

When the fire grew out of control and homes were threatened, Ortiz’s family home was among the first to be evacuated, according to court documents.

 

Thanks go out to Eric

Mike Malenski

From the Muskogee Phoenix:

An Oklahoma Forestry Service firefighter was arrested Monday in connection with a series of wildfires intentionally set in Cherokee County.

Mike Malenski, 38, was placed on administrative leave pending termination following the arrest. Malenski served seven years as a forest ranger based in Tahlequah.

Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food, & Forestry law enforcement officers investigated the fires after receiving calls regarding the possibility of arson. Officials said they will be presenting the case to the Cherokee County District Attorney for prosecution.

“We investigate arson and we bring those we catch to justice. It was regrettable that it was one of our own employees,” said Mark Goeller, assistant director in charge of fire operations with Oklahoma Forestry Services.

Arson is a felony punishable by up to three years imprisonment and a fine of up to $5,000.

 
Thanks Dick

A volunteer firefighter pleaded guilty on Tuesday to starting a fire in 2009 that burned 1,500 acres in the Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area north of the twin cities in Minnesota. The plea agreement stipulates that he will be sentenced to serve up to 120 days in jail, will be on probation for up to three years, and will have to pay restitution in the amount of $50,000 to $70,000.

From KARE11.com in 2009:

KARE spoke with two witnesses — a father and daughter — who helped lead authorities to Berken. They asked not to be identified out of fear for their safety.

They say they were driving to Forest Lake for groceries around 1 p.m. Monday when the father looked in his rearview mirror and saw something shoot out of the car behind him.

“I saw this stream of grey smoke, an explosion of fireworks,” he says. “I mean, red, white, blue, green. They just shot all over the place and it was instant flames.”

The daughter immediately called 911. They got behind the suspect’s car to get a look at his license plate, which had a red “Firefighter” emblem.

“I was really stunned,” the daughter says. “I’m like, I think this guy’s a firefighter.”

They followed the speeding suspect for about three miles but eventually lost him. Still, their description helped investigators identify Berken. He was arrested at the scene a few hours later while fighting the fire.

“I’m told he was taken into custody at one of the homes that had been evacuated,” says Lt. Paul Sommer of the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office.

The sheriff found Berken’s car parked at the fire department and later arrested him at the fire scene while he was fighting the fire.

Berken has a checkered past. In 1991 he was convicted of calling an airport and in a fake middle eastern accent threatening to blow it up. In another incident he called an airport control tower and said the pilot of his aircraft had a heart attack and he needed help landing the plane. He was sentenced to a year in federal prison for making false radio transmissions.

Berken also served 20 months in prison for several check-forgery and theft convictions.

When he first applied to be a volunteer with the Forest Lake Fire Department in 2005 he was rejected after a background check revealed his criminal history. He appealed to the Mayor at the time, Terry Smith, who reversed the decision but required that Berken serve an extended probationary period which ended in 2008. At about that same time that he was allowed onto the department, Berken, who owned a Ford dealership, donated a Ford F-350 equipped to fight fires to the fire department.

When Berken’s Ford dealership filed for bankruptcy in 2008, American Express alleged that the company used a charge card in 2007 to obtain just over $4 million in cash and had failed to repay more than $3.8 million.