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Tag: John N. Maclean

Exploding targets: should they be banned?

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , , 6 Comments on Exploding targets: should they be banned?

The issue of exploding targets is receiving more attention as additional evidence is revealed about fires started by these devices. We have written about them a number of times, and now the Wenatchee World has called attention to the issue today in an article by KC Mehaffey. You may recognize some of the names in this excerpt from the article. (Update: a new pay wall may prevent you from viewing the article at that web site. The San Francisco Chronicle also has it, after the story was picked up by the AP.)

…Kelsey Hilderbrand, owner of High Mountain Hunting Supply in Wenatchee, said he’s only familiar with Tannerite’s exploding targets. which he sells at his store for between $4.95 and $9 apiece, depending on the size. “We sell a lot of them. They’re very popular, and they’re a lot of fun,” he said. Hilderbrand said he’s used them a lot, using a haystack as a backdrop, and the targets have never started a fire.

“They are a gaseous explosion,” he said, “They are not a heat-related explosion, so there’s no way to have an ignition-based system.”

Others disagree.

“There’s no question they start fires,” said Bill Gabbert, a former wildland firefighter and fire investigator in Southern California who now produces the online magazine, Wildfire Today.

Gabbert said he found 23 wildfires ignited by exploding target shooters last summer just by searching the Internet. He said he believes they are a growing danger because more and more people are starting to use them.

“It’s just become so popular. If you search on YouTube, you’ll see dozens or hundreds of videos,” he said.

But even if some people think they are fun, Gabbert says exploding targets are nothing to play around with. His website links to a newscast in which a car is demolished by detonating exploding targets.

“I think we need to figure out a way to ban the use of exploding targets,” he said, adding, “I’m convinced they are too dangerous to use.”

John Maclean — author of several books on fatal wildfires including one on the 2001 Thirtymile Fire near Winthrop — said he’s concerned about the danger that exploding targets pose to firefighters.

I am a gun owner, hunter, was on an NCAA varsity Rifle Team in college, and was a member of the NRA before they transmogrified, adopting ridiculous policies. My home is protected by Glock and several other brands. Target shooting is fine as long as it is done safely and does not start fires, damage the environment, or leave behind trash. But the use of these explosive devices during the 2012 fire season has proven that they are incendiary, and too many people have started fires by using them.

Esperanza Fire to become a movie

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , 3 Comments on Esperanza Fire to become a movie

The Esperanza Fire, book coverJohn N. Maclean announced on his Facebook page that his book The Esperanza Fire is slated to be adapted for a movie. He provided a link to an article in Variety which disclosed that Legendary Pictures has closed a deal to adapt it.

We talked with Mr. Maclean, who told us that while the deal has been signed, including the stipulation that he will serve as a consultant, there are many steps that have to be completed before it appears on the big screen. The producers must arrange for someone to write the screenplay, financing has to be arranged, and actors have to be signed — just to name a few.

The book is about the 2006 wildfire that Raymond Oyler lit which raced up a canyon in southern California and overran the five-person crew of U.S. Forest Service engine 57. All five crewmembers, who were protecting an unoccupied house, were killed. Oyler was found guilty of five counts of first-degree murder, 20 counts of arson, and 17 counts of using an incendiary device to start fires. He was sentenced to death.

We have an excerpt from the book in our January 21 article. It will be officially published on February 12, but is already available from Mr. Maclean’s web site, and each book will be personally autographed by him. It is also available at Amazon, but without the autograph.

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UPDATE November 12, 2013:

Esperanza Fire Factual Report, and the USDA Office of Inspector General’s Report on the fire.

Book published about Esperanza Fire

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , , ,

The Esperanza Fire, book cover
The book that John N. Maclean has been working on for years about the Esperanza Fire has been published. Titled The Esperanza Fire: Arson, Murder and the Agony of Engine 57, it covers the 2006 wildfire that Raymond Oyler lit which raced up a canyon in southern California and overran the five-person crew of U.S. Forest Service engine 57. All five crewmembers, who were protecting an unoccupied house, were killed. Oyler was found guilty of five counts of first-degree murder, 20 counts of arson, and 17 counts of using an incendiary device to start fires. He was sentenced to death.

The firefighters who died were engine Capt. Mark Loutzenhiser, 44, of Idyllwild; engine operator Jess McLean, 27, of Beaumont; assistant engine operator Jason McKay, 27, of Phelan; firefighter Daniel Hoover-Najera, 20, of San Jacinto; and firefighter Pablo Cerda, 23, of Fountain Valley.

This extraordinary event, and the trial that followed, had a significant impact on many of us in the fire service.

Mr. Maclean’s other books about wildland fire, include Fire on the Mountain: The True Story of the South Canyon Fire, The Thirtymile Fire: A Chronicle of Bravery and Betrayal, and Fire and Ashes: On the Front Lines of American Wildfire (out of print but may be available at your local book store or at Mr. Maclean’s web site).

The new book, The Esperanza Fire, can be purchased now directly from Mr. Maclean’s web site, and each book will be personally autographed by him. It is also available at Amazon, but without the autograph. It may not be at your local book store until February 12.

If Mr. Maclean’s other books and the excerpt below are any indication, this new one will be difficult to put down.

With the permission of Mr. Maclean and the publisher, Counterpoint Press, we have an excerpt from the book below.

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Introduction to the excerpt, written by John N. Maclean:

Just after midnight on October 26, 2006, an arsonist set a bundle of matches and a Marlboro cigarette, held together by a rubber band, into a patch of grass along a remote roadway in the Banning Pass, which connects Los Angeles with the desert communities to the east. The arsonist drove away, the cigarette burned down and ignited the matches, and the grass caught fire. That was the start of the Esperanza Fire, which eventually burned over 40,000 acres and destroyed over 30 homes and other structures. It also claimed the lives of the five-man crew of Forest Service Engine 57. The arson investigation led to the capital murder trial of Raymond Oyler, who was found guilty of arson and murder and sentenced to death.
Continue reading “Book published about Esperanza Fire”

Two men charged with starting 5,500-acre fire using exploding targets

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , , , , , 10 Comments on Two men charged with starting 5,500-acre fire using exploding targets

Two men have been charged with starting the Dump Fire near Saratoga Springs, Utah that burned more than 5,500 acres and cost $2.1 million to put out. About 2,500 people were forced to evacuate.

Investigators say the men were shooting on June 21 when they hit an explosive target that started the fire in nearby vegetation. Identified as 37-year-old Kenneth Nielsen of Washington, Utah, and 42-year-old Jeffrey Conant of Woodinville, Washington, they were charged with misdemeanor reckless burning and using prohibited targets,

We first wrote about the surge in popularity of exploding targets and the increasing number of wildfires caused by these devices on October 11, 2012. In that article we listed 21 fires that were either confirmed or suspected to be caused by exploding targets since the first of June, 2012. And these are just the ones that we were able to find using Google.

Car destroyed by exploding target
Car destroyed by exploding target. Credit ABC7.com

These devices are sometimes called “binary exploding targets”, since they are completely inert until two powders are mixed at the site by the target shooter. After they are combined, the compound is illegal to transport. The manufacturers claim that the only way they can be detonated is by striking them with a high-velocity bullet fired from a high-powered center-fire rifle. At least one company has recently started offering targets that will explode when hit with a much less powerful .22 caliber rim-fire rifle.

Most of the wildfire community is only beginning to learn of of this disturbing trend.

Laws regulating the devices vary from state to state. CAL FIRE investigator Capt. Gregory Ewing, issued a safety bulletin following a June, 2012 fire in Riverside County that was started by exploding targets. He suggested that users of the targets could be charged with multiple felonies.

Possessing it with the intent to mix the two parts (thus creating an explosive) is a felony. Actually mixing the two parts is also a felony, and detonating it is yet another.

John N. Maclean, the author of several books about wildfires, in an October 18 OP-ED article on the New York Times’ web site, wrote about penalties that have been assessed against arsonists and others who have started wildfires. He briefly mentioned exploding targets:

Some practice shooters fire at exploding targets — store-bought canisters that blow up when pierced by a bullet. These are largely legal, but they should be banned immediately.

I agree with Mr. Maclean. It is ridiculous that these incendiary devices which have been demonstrated to be extremely dangerous in the hands of the average shooter, are legal. They should not only be illegal to transport after the two chemicals have been mixed, the kits to assemble them should not be legal to sell or possess.

Specific legislation is needed so that a person starting a fire with an exploding target can be charged with a crime that is more punitive than misdemeanor reckless burning or using prohibited targets, as was the case in the brain dead shooters that started the $2.1 million Dump Fire.

John N. Maclean previews Esperanza fire book

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , ,

hand holding matchJohn N. Maclean has been working on a new book about the Esperanza fire for quite some time, but he still has a lot of work left to do on the project. The earliest it will be published is late 2011. But in the meantime, we have a preview of the still untitled book through a lengthy article he wrote for the High Country News.  Here is a description of the piece:

“When a jury returns to a packed courtroom to announce the verdict in a capital murder case, every noise — even a chair scraping or a door opening — cracks like a rifle shot. That’s how it was at the trial of Raymond Lee Oyler, accused of murder for setting Southern California’s Esperanza Fire, which fatally burned five men on a U.S. Forest Service engine crew. As the jurors filed into the Riverside County Superior Court room … they had to work to keep their decision off their faces.”

With powerful scenes like that and compelling storytelling, writer John N. Maclean explores the world of wildfire arson in the cover story of the latest issue of High Country News, the nonprofit magazine that covers the American West.

Under the headline, “The Fiery Touch,” Maclean takes us into the courtroom where Oyler was tried in 2009 on arson and murder charges. He reports testimony of witnesses and kin of the dead and details of the jury’s deliberations. He reconstructs the 2006 Esperanza Fire’s fierceness and how investigators cracked the case. He also describes the history of notable wildfire arson cases and the longtime tolerance for people who start wildfires to create firefighting jobs, and talks about how, “The Oyler case stands as a warning to every would-be fire starter: Tolerance for the torch has gone the way of the Old West.”

A sidebar describes more than a dozen notable wildfire arson cases in the last half-century, including huge blazes in Southern California, Arizona and Colorado and the 1953 Rattlesnake Fire that killed 15 firefighters.

Maclean has written several books on disastrous Western wildfires and “A Fiery Touch” is adapted from a forthcoming book. For more on him, check his website: http://JohnMacleanBooks.com.

As a High Country News editor’s note for The Fiery Touch says: “Wildfire arsonists wield a devilish power over the environment and other people. Maclean focuses on a particularly terrible case and the toughest form of justice. It’s a riveting and timely read.”

John N. Maclean’s previous books include Fire on the Mountain: The True Story of the South Canyon Fire, The Thirtymile Fire: A Chronicle of Bravery and Betrayal, and Fire and Ashes: On the Front Lines of American Wildfire.

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UPDATE November 12, 2013:

Esperanza Fire Factual Report, and the USDA Office of Inspector General’s Report on the fire.

Dick Rothermel’s collaboration with Norman Maclean

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags ,
Dick Rothermel
Dick Rothermel

The Missoulian has an article about how Norman Maclean, in researching the fire behavior on the Mann Gulch fire in 1979, sought out Dick Rothermel of the Fire Sciences Laboratory in Missoula when Maclean was working on his “Young Men and Fire” book. Here is an excerpt from the article:

Rothermel, an aeronautical engineer, had developed a fire-spread model at the lab in 1972. It’s a model that, while technologically enhanced over the years, remains the engine of tools used to predict fire behavior today.

At first his involvement with Maclean’s book was “something I really didn’t want to do,” Rothermel told a packed room Thursday at the fire sciences lab’s weekly seminar series.

Controversy still swirled around the Mann Gulch fire, in which 13 firefighters died, and he had no desire to reopen emotional wounds. But the tragedy was what spawned establishment of the research lab itself, which recruited Rothermel shortly after it opened in 1960.

“We set up a communication that went on for several years while (Maclean) was back at the University of Chicago, and when he’d come to Seeley Lake and hang out, he’d come and see us,” Rothermel said.

They went to work on Mann Gulch questions that Maclean felt remained unanswered. How did the fire near the Missouri River north of Helena get from a ridge above the firefighters to the mouth of the gulch below? Where did the men go and why couldn’t they escape? Did the escape fire that saved foreman Wag Dodge’s life overtake his own crew?

“We never could get it straight, in (Maclean’s) mind anyway, as to just what happened until finally I worked out a diagram,” said Rothermel.

The graph shows the rate of spread of the fire and the rate of travel of the men, and how “they finally meet in a race that couldn’t be won,” he said. Maclean used it in “Young Men and Fire.” In 1993, the Forest Service published the chart along with Rothermel’s own assessment of the day in a 10-page pamphlet called “Mann Gulch Fire: A Race That Couldn’t Be Won.” Rothermel has high praise for Maclean’s work, calling it “an almost poetic rendition of what happened that day.”

“Norman was kind of a feisty little guy, and he was an English professor,” Rothermel said, recalling the days of scientific discussion with Maclean and fellow fire scientist Frank Albini.

“Norman would look at us and we’d get into ‘rate of spread’ and ‘flame lengths’ and ‘heat content,’ and pretty soon his eyes would glaze over. He’d start saying how strong these young men were. His main thought in this book was the young men themselves, and the tragedy that occurred.”

Rothermel retired from the fire lab 15 years ago. When Norman Maclean died in 1990 the book that he had worked on for 14 years was still not finished, but his son, John N. Maclean completed some editing on the book and it was published in 1992.