A Fayette County, West Virginia man is in custody charged with arson and murder in connection with the fire that claimed the life of Fayette County firefighter Cody Mullens. Sheriff Mike Fridley announced that David Bass, 39, of Kimberly was charged with four counts of felony wildland arson and one count of felony murder. It’s alleged that Bass set the fire in the Tucker Hollow area of Powellton, according to Metro News in Charleston.
Firefighter Cody Mullens
Mullens, 28, of Mount Hope, was struck by a falling tree and died a short time later. A joint investigation by the West Virginia Fire Marshall’s Office, the Division of Forestry, and the Fayette County Sheriff determined that the cause of the fire, reported April 12, was arson. This is reported to be the first line of duty death in the history of the Division of Forestry.
Fridley said Mullens was brave and honorable “who was and will always be a hero.” According to WOWKTV-13 News, anyone with information can contact the Fayette County Sheriff’s Department at (304)574-3590 or Crime Stoppers of West Virginia at (304)255-STOP.
A West Virginia Department of Forestry employee, Cody J. Mullens, 28, was killed by a falling tree while fighting a wildfire on April 13 near Montgomery, West Virginia.
The firefighter’s death was announced by West Virginia governor Jim Justice, who said he and his wife were “heartbroken by the tragic news of losing one of our own. Our state foresters are some of the most dedicated workers in our state, putting their lives on the line to protect our communities from wildfires, and we owe them all, especially Cody, an enormous debt of gratitude.”
Mullens was from Mt. Hope, Fayette County. West Virginia Public Broadcasting reported that he was part of a response unit working a brush fire along Route 61 in Armstrong Creek, around 30 miles southeast of Charleston.
West Virginia has statewide burn restrictions in effect and is midway through their typical wildfire season.
A Douglas County non-profit will receive $9 million in prevention grant funding, the second highest award in the state of Oregon. The U.S. Forest Service awarded $9,151,505 through its Community Wildfire Defense Grant program (CWDG) to the Douglas Electric Cooperative, according to a KEZI News report. The non-profit electric utility serves 11,000 meters in a 2,500-square-mile territory that includes Douglas, Coos, and Lane counties in western Oregon.
In Grant County, the town of John Day received two grants, including the state’s largest award of $9,907,344 earmarked for Grant County’s evacuation corridor and fuels management, Forest Service officials said. (This is the same Grant County that arrested a burn boss on a USFS prescribed fire last fall.) The Blue Mountain Eagle reported that Prairie Wood Products also was awarded a $1 million grant as part of an effort to strengthen the wood products economy and promote sustainable forest management. Through the Wood Products Infrastructure Assistance grant program, the Forest Service is providing funding to wood processing facilities to improve, establish, retrofit, or expand facilities that purchase and process byproducts from ecosystem restoration projects on federal or tribal lands.
The Forest Service’s CWDG program invests a total of $23.5 million to assist communities, and often partners with The Nature Conservancy. “In 60 years of working with wildland fire, The Nature Conservancy has learned that successful wildfire adaptation efforts are inevitably grounded in communities,” said Marek Smith, director of TNC’s North America Fire program. “The Community Wildfire Defense Grant program provides an important opportunity to deliver needed resources to communities that are doing the challenging work of living sustainably with wildfire.”
The 2021 Bootleg Fire on the Chiloquin Ranger District of the Fremont-Winema National Forest. South Central Oregon Fire Management Partnership photo
Some of the 100 funded projects — including the Chiloquin Wildfire Risk Reduction and Education project in Oregon — are led by TNC or its partners.
“We’re grateful for support of TNC-involved projects, and we’re deeply grateful to see a broad slate of funded projects that are diverse in terms of scope, communities represented, and geography,” said Smith. “A better future with wildland fire requires that outmoded ideas and approaches are transformed by the vision and experience of diverse communities.”
Forest Service officials said the CWDG program funding is made possible through the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, part of which prioritized low-income communities at risk of a wildfire hazard. An additional round of funding will be announced later this year.
A fast-moving wildfire in southern New Jersey grew to nearly 4,000 acres in under 24 hours as record springtime heat has set in across the Northeast. CNN reported that the Jimmy’s Waterhole Fire had already burned more than half the average acres burned in New Jersey in an entire year, according to statistics from the New Jersey Forest Fire Service. The fire was 50 percent contained at 3,859 acres by Wednesday morning.
It was reported at just 500 acres at 10 p.m. Tuesday, according to the New Jersey Forest Fire Service.
WPVI-TV News reported Wednesday morning that the fire was at 50 percent containment, and by Wednesday afternoon it was estimated at 60 percent.
About 170 structures in the Manchester Township area were evacuated Tuesday night, but all residents have since been allowed to return home, Manchester Police Chief Robert Dolan said during a news conference Wednesday.
New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection photo
New Jersey has been dealing with a series of recent fires exacerbated by dry and windy conditions. The Washington Post reported a mandatory evacuation in Manchester, where residents were relocated to the Manchester Township High School, with support from the American Red Cross, Manchester Township EMS, Manchester Police Department, and Ocean County Sheriff’s Office.
The University of Oregon in Eugene is launching a new research program to study effects of wildfire smoke and examine options for reducing risks. UO research professor Cass Moseley told KGW News that the center’s launch is due in part to efforts by Oregon’s U.S. Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, who secured $800,000 in funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Research will focus in part on new ways to protect homes from smoke infiltration, along with more efficient communication with communities in emergencies and developing community action plans tailored to different regions in the Northwest.
The new Wildfire Smoke Research and Practice Center builds on research already completed through the Ecosystem Workforce Program (EWP), a joint venture between the UO and Oregon State University. KLCC reported that the EWP’s senior policy advisor Cass Moseley will head up the new center; she said recent incidents in the Pacific Northwest, particularly the 2020 Labor Day fires, highlighted the need for new smoke research. Much of Oregon, particularly the southern Willamette Valley, was choked with wildfire smoke for weeks during the 2020 fire season.
Those fires and the severe levels of smoke really emphasized the need for new research, according to Moseley. “And we saw this fall in Oakridge, several weeks of highly dense smoke as the fire there settled into that valley and really stayed; that community spent a lot of time and energy responding to that smoke event.”
Cedar Creek Fire Incident Command Post in Oakridge, Oct. 15, 2022 — Inciweb photo
The center’s launch was announced by Merkley and Wyden, who secured the funding to help communities prepare for wildfire smoke. One area of interest is the toxins released when manmade structures burn, as these risks became obvious during western Oregon fires in wildland/urban interface areas over the last few years. Most smoke research has focused on burning timber and wooden structures, and part of the new planned research will study effects of smoke from burning plastics, glass, fuels, and other synthetic materials. Moseley said the center has three co-investigators and a principal investigator leading the group, along with research assistants and graduate and undergraduate student assistants.
Chairman of the California state’s Senate Governmental Organization Committee, Bill Dodd, D-Napa, will hold a hearing tomorrow to review “improvements to wildfire preparedness and prevention,” including legislation and investments undertaken over the past five years. The Daily Republic of Solano County reported that the committee will hear from state and local agencies including Cal Fire and the Legislative Analyst’s Office, and will take public comment.
Back in February, the Lake County News reported on Sen. Dodd’s announcement of legislation to create the Wildfire Mitigation Planning Act, to better prevent and contain wildfires. In the aftermath of the 2018 Camp Fire (which leveled the northern California town of Paradise and evacuated not just Paradise but also Magalia, Centerville, Concow, Pulga, Butte Creek Canyon, Berry Creek and Yankee Hill), Dodd co-authored AB 1054, which created a framework for electric utilities to evaluate their wildfire risk and plan for their wildfire mitigation investments and activities — overseen by the Office of Electric Infrastructure Safety within the California Natural Resources Agency.
“With this cycle of heavy rains and prolonged droughts, we cannot take our eyes off of the risks that major wildfires present to communities across the state,” said Dodd. “The Legislature made good progress on wildfire safety and we must ensure our proposals and investments do what they are intended to do,” he said in a statement announcing the hearing, which will be held tomorrow after Senate adjournment.
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