The wildland firefighting community in Oregon and beyond mourns the loss of one of their own. The Grant County Sheriff in eastern Oregon confirmed that SEAT pilot James Bailey Maxwell, 74, was killed while working near the Falls Fire near Seneca on the Malheur National Forest on July 25, 2024.
The BLM said Maxwell had dropped retardant on the Parasol Fire north of the Falls Fire and was returning to the base at Burns to reload. He disappeared just before 7:00 p.m. Thursday. Owned and operated by North Dakota-based Aerial Timber Applicators, the aircraft was reported missing and triggered a search by numerous agencies including a night-flying helicopter with the Oregon National Guard.
Search and rescue teams searched overnight and located the aircraft Friday morning in steep terrain.
Maxwell was a long-experienced pilot who’d spent 54 years of his life flying and had logged approximately 24,000 hours of flight time. He will be missed by family members in Idaho, Oregon, and Washington.
Falls Fire ICP
The Falls Fire today is almost 70 percent contained at 142,30 acres.
The Maxwell family and firefighters are grateful for the support expressed throughout the community and online. Services have not yet been announced and the family requests time and privacy.
An early report by KOIN-TV indicated crews were searching for a lost airtanker that disappeared late Thursday. The BLM-contracted SEAT went missing while fighting a lightning-started fire near Seneca, Oregon. The Central Oregon Daily News said the pilot was en route to a spot fire near the the Falls Fire and was killed in the crash. The BLM confirmed that the wreckage was found and the pilot’s body recovered; the pilot’s identity has not been released.
The Aviation Safety Network reported that an Air Tractor AT-802A owned by Wakefield Aircraft out of North Dakota crashed near Seneca, with one occupant, unknown injuries, and unknown aircraft damage.
The plane went missing around 7 p.m. while working a lightning start near the Falls Fire. The Grant County Sheriff’s Office and Falls Fire personnel immediately began a search and the Oregon National Guard searched overnight without success. Grant County Search and Rescue on Friday joined the search. KGW-TV said the SEAT was flying out of Burns, about 45 miles from Seneca via US-395. The Falls Fire’s about 25 miles south of John Day.
Falls Fire 07/23/24 ~ IMT photo
The Falls Fire was at 141,926 acres and 55 percent containment, according to a KTVB-TV report. On Friday afternoon that was updated to 55 percent contained at 140,422 acres.
Falls Fire 07/24/24 south of John Day, Oregon on the Malheur National Forest.
Dozer div on the Falls Fire 07/2024
KPTV reported that fire managers reported the aircraft missing on a lightning-started fire on the Malheur National Forest. Search crews have been hunting for the plane since Thursday night and will continue Friday.
The fire was human-caused and is under investigation. Investigators ask for the public’s assistance with any tips or information about the start of the Falls Fire on the Malheur. Please email tips to SM.FS.R6TipHotLine@usda.gov
Threatened property includes 377 homes, 118 commercial buildings, and nearly 700 outbuildings. Resources include 38 crews, 79 engines, 24 dozers, 25 watertenders, plus helicopters and SEATs, for a total of 1560 personnel.
The Alaska Complex IMT 1 assumed command of the Falls and Telephone fires at 6:00 am Friday and is in unified command with the Oregon State Fire Marshal (OSFM). Their thorough update for today is posted online [HERE] but includes no mention of the crash or the search for the missing SEAT. The Harney County Sheriff’s evacuation map is [HERE] and the Grant County Emergency Management wildfire info page is [HERE].
Strong afternoon winds together with extremely dry fuels increased fire behavior on the Telephone Fire, and several new starts were identified east of the Falls Fire in the Parasol Butte area. Evacuation levels were announced and extended in response to the new starts and the Telephone Fire’s move across FSR 28.
Crews responded along with aerial resources, and structure protection crews mobilized and responded to the area. The Telephone Fire has grown 3,000 acres and moved farther southeast overnight; it’s now about 4 miles north of Hwy 20. Smoky conditions are expected to continue; an inversion layer sits over the fire but may lift by early afternoon. Temperatures have been in the mid-80s.
~ Thanks and a tip of the hardhat to Jeff on this one.
The wreckage was found and the pilot’s body has been recovered, according to Lisa Clark of BLM. The pilot’s identity and the precise location of where the plane was found was not released
The criminal case against Ricky Snodgrass resulting from a prescribed fire on the Malheur National Forest has ended, according to. a report by OPB, after the court dismissed the charge brought by the Grant County, Oregon District Attorney Jim Carpenter.
County Sheriff Todd McKinley arrested Snodgrass, the burn boss on the Starr 6 fire, in the midst of a dispute with adjacent landowners.
A Grant County grand jury back in February indicted Snodgrass, 41, on a misdemeanor charge of reckless burning. In part because Snodgrass and many of the firefighters he was supervising, on a federal agency operation on federal land, were federal employees, the case was moved from the rural Oregon town of John Day to federal court in Pendleton. Defense lawyers asked a judge to dismiss it and Carpenter did not oppose the motion. The judge in the case dismissed it this week.
“Mr. Snodgrass was charged because the State — or more precisely, the local sheriff — took issue with the Forest Service’s decision to conduct the prescribed fire,” defense attorneys wrote last month in court documents. “But the State cannot charge Mr. Snodgrass with a crime simply because it disagrees with the Forest Service’s decision.”
The Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution means that Snodgrass was immune from prosecution.
OPB reported that in February of 2024 front of the grand jury, McKinley testified that the arrest got “huge national exposure.”
“I don’t know if you guys want to know how many hundreds of phone calls I got over this,” McKinley testified. “Either I was a pariah, the enemy, or they’re trying to make me a hero out of it.”
👮🏼♂️ Seriously, McKinley, no one thinks you are a hero.
Statement issued by Grant County Sheriff Todd McKinley)Regarding the recent dismissal in Federal Court of the arrest of the Burn Boss at the Starr 6 uncontrolled burn in Grant County Oregon on October 19th 2022, I have the following to say: The United States Federal Government chose to use the “Supremacy Clause” as their basis for the request of dismissal. My interpretation of the use of this clause is such, that the State Law was sufficient for the charges, and the only way to circumvent this was to appeal to the Federal Court. I am saddened that our own Government, which was established, “of the People, by the People, for the People”, would to not “do the right thing” and make the damaged party whole, for fear of assuming responsibility for their actions. The hope out of all of this, is in the future, that more care will be taken, guidelines followed, and the United States Forest Service will heed their own motto: “Caring for the Land and Serving People”. Todd McKinley
Sheriff
Lawyers representing Ricky Snodgrass, the burn boss who was arrested by the sheriff in Grant County, Oregon, are working to move the arresting-a-federal-employee case to U.S. District Court in Pendleton.
Snodgrass had a scheduled appearance on the first of April on the reckless burning charge that followed the local district attorney’s indictment of the burn boss during a prescribed fire on the Malheur National Forest in the fall of 2022.
The D.A. was served with a notice about moving the case to federal court, where charges will likely be immediately dropped.
Kirk Siegler, in his Morning Edition report on NPR, explained that Snodgrass’s arrest and the (much) later indictment were based on a “reckless” burning charge when a spot fire somehow ignited in dry grass across the road from a planned and approved and publicized prescribed fire — grass on the property of the Holliday Ranch, an adjacent landowner. Some of the landowner’s family members and/or friends had been driving up and down the road between the ranch and USFS property, harassing the firefighters, before Snodgrass finally called police to report the problems.
[note: Though Siegler calls this a “reckless burn” charge, Ricky Snodgrass was charged with “reckless burning” by the sheriff.]
After Snodgrass phoned in the harassment and reckless driving by locals, the sheriff in John Day responded to the incident, found Snodgrass supervising the burn under way by federal and state and contract crews, and instead of citing the locals, arrested the burn boss.
Sheriff McKinley handcuffed him, arrested him for “reckless burning,” and drove him into town to the jail in John Day — where he was quickly released.
The burn boss arrest very quickly hit the news and ignited controversy — far beyond Oregon and the wildland fire community. The story was picked up by news organizations including the Washington Post, The Guardian, NBC News, ABC News, Reuters, and others. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore quickly vowed he and the agency would “not stand idly by” after this first-ever arrest, and that he and others would defend USFS employees.
Grant County District Attorney Jim Carpenter
The county D.A. Jim Carpenter in October of 2022 indicted the burn boss on a charge of so-called reckless burning.
Sheriff McKinley eventually completed his investigation and presented the case to Carpenter for review, and on February 2, 2024, the case was finally presented to a grand jury, which returned an indictment against Ricky Snodgrass for Reckless Burning, ORS 164.335, a Class A misdemeanor that carries a penalty of up to a year in jail and a $6,250 fine.
In the State of Oregon, a person commits the crime of reckless burning if the person recklessly damages property of another by fire or explosion. Not long after Snodgrass’ arrest, Carpenter laid out what he said was the legal standard for determining whether a burn is reckless. “The risk must be of such nature and degree that disregard thereof constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would observe in the situation,” he said.
The head of the NFFE union said the sheriff had interfered with a federal employee in the course of his duties, and one or more of the firefighters under direction of the burn boss pointed this out to Sheriff McKinley on that day. Snodgrass was directing a federal project and supervising crews — not just USFS but also ODF and contract fire crews — on a large prescribed burn, one of a series of planned and approved and publicized burns on the Malheur National Forest.
To no one’s surprise, Sheriff Todd McKinley has declined interview requests.
Grant County officials told NPR the arrest is being overblown. “One man doing his job kind of caused the other one to have to do his,” said Scott Myers, the judge and CEO for Grant County in John Day. He claims the weather conditions that day probably weren’t favorable for a burn — despite the alignment with the specs in the burn plan — and he says the fire somehow “damaged” private property — though neigher Myers nor anyone else has actually claimed this publicly or explained what they’re talking about.
Despite the adjacent landowners’ talk, the slopover across the road blackened not quite 20 acres and was contained inside of an hour — even though the project supervisor had been removed — not by the ranchers but by the federal and/or state and/or contract crews assigned by the USFS to the RxFire.
The eastern Oregon region has a long history of mistrust of and antagonism toward the federal government. Local residents for years before that ranted about how the UN and NATO had a plot under way to take over all federal lands in eastern Oregon — somehow in cahoots, they said, with the Chinese Communist Party.
Grant County has a long history of tension with federal agencies and employees, despite the large number of locals employed by federal agencies in and around John Day. It’s the same kind of tension that stormed the National Capitol on January 06, 2021 — and back in 2016 took over and occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge about 100 miles south in neighboring Harney County.
Not quite 30 years ago, county voters approved a symbolic measure “prohibiting the federal Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service from owning and managing federal lands within Grant County.”
Grant County later asked Congress to grant the county title to all federal lands — about 60 percent of the acreage in the county.
During the 41-day armed occupation in 2016 of the Malheur NWR, several militia members led by Ammon Bundy (who has since disappeared after being successfully sued for defamation by a hospital in Boise) were driving to John Day to meet with supporters. They ran into a police roadblock, and LaVoy Finicum was fatally shot by law enforcement.
Scott Myers, CEO and Judge, Grant County
Grant County chief executive Scott Myers claims that relations between the county and federal employees have since improved.
“We get labeled a lot to be a whole bunch of gun-totin’ pickup-drivin’ crazy maniacs out here, and I don’t really think we are,” he told NPR.
Trump “cartoon” in the Blue Mountain Eagle. Definitely NOT gun-totin’pickup-drivin’ crazy maniacs., nope.
Thanks and a tip of the hardhat to CARL for this story, but don’t bother looking for news updates from the paper in John Day, because their editor’s now “monetizing their content” behind a paywall.
Grant County has a long history of tension with federal agencies and employees, despite the large number of locals employed by federal agencies in and around John Day. It’s the same kind of tension that stormed the National Capitol on January 06, 2021 — and back in 2016 took over and 
