A probationary volunteer firefighter in Pennsylvania has been charged with five counts of arson involving structure fires and is suspected of starting eight vegetation fires.
David Donnora’s most obvious mistake, other than deciding to become an arsonist, was responding to the correct address of a brush fire in Laflin even though the dispatcher mistakenly sent crews to an incorrect location. He found himself alone at the scene, which of course raised the eyebrows of other firefighters and the state police.
Here is an excerpt from an article in the Citizens Voice:
…Donnora, of 433 Highway 315 in Dupont, was a probationary member with the Laflin Volunteer Fire Department from June to September and worked with the Dupont Volunteer Fire Department from September until early December, when state police determined he was a suspect in a Main Street house fire, authorities said.
While Donnora was a fireman in Laflin, there were seven suspicious brush fires throughout the spring and summer, police said.
“He was with us for about four months. During that time, as you can see, we had a lot of brush fires. I immediately became suspicious and I turned it over to police,” Laflin Fire Chief Mark Malvizzi said. “I think it’s very possible this former member had an idea he was suspected, and stopped showing up.”
The fires continued when Donnora transferred to Dupont, except there all the blazes involved structures.
State police said Donnora once again raised suspicions of fellow firefighters when he was the first firefighter to arrive to suit up at the fire station following the report of a fire at 251 Main St. in Dupont at 6:50 a.m. Dec. 10.
Arrest papers say a state police fire marshal became suspicious of Donnora while investigating that fire because Donnora “was following him, taking interest in what he was doing.”
Pennsylvania Firefighter sentenced for arson crimes
A 21-year old former volunteer firefighter pleaded guilty in October to conspiracy to commit arson after igniting a wildfire in July 2010 in Northampton County. Cory A. Praschyk suffers from anxiety and depression and has been diagnosed as a pyromaniac, according to a psychological evaluation completed prior to sentencing. He is already serving time for arson in Lehigh County. The new sentence for the Northampton County offense is one to 12 months in county prison to run concurrently with his Lehigh County sentence, which will conclude in about three months.
Kentucky man dies suppressing debris fire
Robert Childress, 64-years old, died in a Lexington hospital from smoke inhalation and burns over 95 percent of his body after he was found by a Kentucky Division of Forestry fire crew that arrived to suppress a vegetation fire reported by an aircraft. According to a report at Kentucky.com, Mr. Childress was apparently attempting to put out a fire that was called a debris burn by officials.
California fire crew accused of drug use and murder threats
Television station 17 KGET in central California has an article about their investigation into what appears to be serious problems last summer within the Rincon hand crew, a Sequoia National Forest Type 2 crew based out of Kernville, California. Here is how it begins:
Fire crew members say drug and alcohol abuse, fighting, and even murder threats were just some of the reasons a Forest Service fire crew was grounded over the summer. Those allegations came to light after a four-month investigation by 17 News.
We received hundreds of pages of previously secret government documents. 17’s Rob Martin broke the first story in June and has been digging ever since.
Rincon, a National Forest Service, Type 2 fire crew based in Kernville, was grounded for months this summer.
Rincon was rife with salacious allegations, including years of drug use on the team. It’s something the Forest Service refused to talk to us about, so we did the story without them.
Koalas injured in large vegetation fire in South Australia
Animal hospitals are caring for koalas that were injured in a massive brush fire in South Australia.
(the video is no longer available)
Summary of this year’s wildfires in the west
Bill Croke has written an interesting article at Spectator.org that nicely summarizes the wildfire season in the western United States. Here are some excerpts:
…There were notable named conflagrations in Colorado such as High Park near Denver and Waldo Canyon near Colorado Springs, and in Idaho (Hallstead near Stanley; Mustang near Salmon; Trinity Ridge near Boise). New Mexico saw the Whitewater-Baldy Fire on the Gila National Forest, at 465 square miles (297,000 acres) the largest in state history. The Waldo Canyon Fire took the grand prize for structures burned with 347. A hot, dry summer coupled with ongoing conditions of heavy fuel loads in pine beetle-infested forests (thanks to past fire suppression and little timber harvest on federal land) has brought us record fire seasons in the West for the last two decades.
According to a story in Montana’s Missoulian newspaper, recent seasons have seen a sevenfold increase in fires greater than 10,000 acres as compared to the 1970s, and five times more fires larger than 25,000 acres. Current seasons are an average of 75 days longer. Is this last the result of the factors noted above, or those factors and climate change proceeding in tandem? So goes the endless argument on the public lands in the West.
[…]
A young woman named Anne Veseth, 20, a U.S. Forest Service firefighter, was killed when a burning tree fell on her in Idaho’s Clearwater National Forest. She joined seven fellow firefighters (mostly air tanker crew members) who died in the field this year. In June a plane crash on a fire in Utah took the lives of two Idaho men, Todd Tompkins and Ronnie Chambers. Another crash in South Dakota this summer killed four, as a donated North Carolina Air National Guard C-130 went down. This brings to twenty the number of aircraft related fatalities recorded since 1987. An aging fleet of air tankers has become a chronic problem.
It is much smaller than a fusee and does not have a handle. Apparently the entire device will burn up, so if someone is using it for signaling, they are cautioned to place it on the ground in an area where it will not start a wildfire. However, it can also be used to start a campfire while it burns for five minutes at over 3,400 degrees.
The standard fusee used by wildland firefighters. Photo by Orion.
A jury has recommended that Rickie Lee Fowler be sentenced to death for starting the 2003 Old fire that destroyed 1,003 homes, burned 91,000 acres, and led to five deaths. He was convicted on August 15 of two arson charges and of murdering the five people who died of heart attacks after their homes burned or while they evacuated during the fire near San Bernardino, California.
The judge in the case has the legal authority to reduce the death sentence to life in prison, but that rarely occurs in California.
In the trial, the State employed the same principle used when prosecutors in neighboring Riverside County won a death penalty conviction against Raymond Lee Oyler, an auto mechanic who set the 2006 Esperanza wildfire that killed five federal firefighters. Oyler is believed to be the first person in the U.S. to be convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in a wildland arson case.
Before the trial Mr. Fowler said he and three men in a van had intended to rob John Aylward, a person he identified as his godfather, but realized they were too drunk or stoned to pull it off. Instead, they decided to start a fire, as one person testified before a grand jury, “to burn John’s house down”.
In an interview with investigators, Mr. Fowler said he struck the flare and threw it into the vegetation, but corrected himself and said one of the other men in the van struck the flare. In a later interview, he said he intended to strike and throw the flare, but Martin Valdez Jr. took it from him, struck it, and threw it into the brush.
While in prison before the trial, Mr. Fowler was convicted of sodomizing another jail inmate and sentenced to three 25-years-to-life prison terms.
“America, I think, is under attack by terrorists waging economic warfare by fire.”
In this important and compelling video William Scott talks about how terrorists could, and perhaps already are waging economic war inside the United State by starting wildfires which can cost the government and residents billions of dollars. He also refers to the al Qaeda magazine article which encouraged Western Muslims to wage war within the United States by engaging in lone wolf attacks, including setting forest fires.
Economic terrorism was one of the desired effects of the 9/11 attacks, to force the United States to spend billions of dollars beefing up our security infrastructure. The terrorists succeeded in meeting that objective.
Mr. Scott worked on the 2002 Blue Ribbon Panel that studied and made recommendations about the air tanker fleet after the mid-air wing failures of two air tankers that year. He also is a former editor of Aviation Week, former official of the National Security Agency, and the author of Space Wars.
In the video, Mr. Scott does not just complain and rant like some politicians, he actually has some constructive suggestions, including:
Using NASA and military assets, 24/7, to patrol fire-prone forests, using “fire combat air patrols” to quickly detect new fires and to track suspects leaving the scene;
Stop narrowly thinking of fires as a land management issue, and begin treating them as a national security issue;
“Finally it’s time. We have to develop and field a robust large air tanker fleet of firefighting aircraft. The Forest Service has made a good start, but it still suffers from a culture and attitude of what firefighters call ‘cheapism’, the idea that we can fight wildland fire on the cheap. And that’s no longer acceptable.”
Cygnet Fire in Yellowstone NP, August 24, 2012 Photo by Yellowtone National Park
The Cygnet Fire in Yellowstone National Park, 5 miles southeast of Norris Junction, experienced some growth and produced an impressive smoke column most of the day Friday. The estimated size earlier today was 750 acres. A Red Flag warning is in effect on Saturday until 9 p.m.
10 Tanker Air Carrier, which operates the two DC-10 air tankers, sent this via their @10Tanker Twitter account today:
Approaching 1 million gallons dropped on CA fires since arriving at MCC 8 days ago.
Two cousins who started the Wallow fire which became the largest fire in the history of Arizona, were convicted and sentenced to two days in jail.
A man convicted of burning down his own house may have committed suicide in the courtroom seconds after hearing the verdict.
A commission is looking into the Lower North Fork prescribed fire southwest of Denver which escaped on March 26, 2012 and burned 4,140 acres, killed 3 people, and burned 23 homes. Our earlier reports on the fire can be found here.
On August 16 we wrote about the US Forest Service’s plan to add one night-flying helicopter next year. Here is the PE Enterprise’s view on the subject. Thanks go out to LM, Gary, Kelly, and Mark
People who start wildfires should be held accountable.
There is a growing intolerance by both legal courts and citizens for wildfire arson, whether the start is deliberate or negligent or just plain accidental. The Washington Post recently reported on a legal case in Arizona, in which a couple of young men got off easy for their role in starting off a gi-normous fire, the 538,000-acre Wallow Fire. The Prescott Daily Courier editorial called it “Two days in jail. Five years probation. A lifetime of regret.”
Right on.
In an opinion piece in the Seattle Times, wildland fire author John Maclean makes a strong point that legal and public opinions have shifted over the years about just how responsible a person is when a wildland fire is started — intentionally or accidentally. As he notes in his op-ed piece, back in 1953 a grand jury in Willows, California, refused to even indict an admitted arsonist on charges after he torched off what became the Rattlesnake Fire on the Mendocino National Forest. That fatal fire burned not far from the current North Pass Fire, and the Rattlesnake Fire killed 15 firefighters, most of them “missionary firefighters” who lived not far south of there.
As Maclean detailed in his now out-of-print book Fire and Ashes, Stan Pattan, the son of a respected Forest Service engineer, “had not intended to kill anyone,” or so the locals said. In those days, though, setting fires in the wildlands to clear brush, improve hunting opportunities, or maybe even get a little extra work on a going fire was a common practice — nothing to be ashamed of, much less illegal.
Stan Pattan did it, but he did do a little prison time. He certainly wasn’t charged with murder, like Raymond Oyler was for his part in the wildfire arson that started the 2006 Esperanza Fire that wiped out a 5-person USFS engine crew. That whole sordid tale is the subject of Maclean’s next book, which will be released this winter by Counterpoint Press.
