By Mike Carter and Hal Bernton, Seattle Times [here]
TACOMA — Jurors weighing the fate of Briana Waters struggled with a charge that would have sent the 32-year-old mother and violin teacher to prison for 30 years.
Their verdict, delivered Thursday in a packed federal courtroom, recognized her participation in the 2001 arson at a University of Washington research center, but also her limited role in the crime and the modest prison sentences expected to be given to others involved. The arson was committed in the name of the Earth Liberation Front.
While jurors convicted the Oakland, Calif., woman of two counts of arson, they deadlocked on three other charges, including the most serious, which would have sent her to prison for a minimum of 30 years. Afterward, some in the jury said they were sympathetic because Waters has a 3-year-old daughter.
“It’s fair to say that for a lot of us, it was very emotional,” said one male juror, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “I mean, here was a mom with a kid. It certainly played into the deliberations.”
In convicting Waters of arson, the jury agreed with federal prosecutors who said she served as a lookout for a team of Earth Liberation Front saboteurs who firebombed the UW’s Center of Urban Horticulture because they believed, mistakenly, that a researcher was genetically engineering trees.
March 13, 2008 | 4 Comments | Topic: Latest Fire News, Latest Forest News
Republican Whip Press Office, Mar 11, 2008 [here]
WASHINGTON – House Republican Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.) announced today that Rep. Thelma Drake (Va.), with the backing of Republican leadership, will introduce a discharge petition on bipartisan border enforcement legislation called the Secure America Through Verification and Enforcement (SAVE) Act:
“Our national and economic security is threatened by our outdated immigration enforcement laws and our porous borders. For far too long, the House Democratic Leadership has actively blocked sound bipartisan legislation addressing something that should be uncontroversial, like border security, from coming to a vote.
“We learned early on this year that the best way to pass legislation for the good of the American people is by forming a bipartisan consensus. The SAVE Act – with more than 140 cosponsors – is the type of bill that not only a broad swath of Members can support, but more importantly the type of legislation our constituents want enacted. … [more]
March 11, 2008 | 1 Comment | Topic: Latest Fire News
WASHINGTON — The federal government would revamp how it pays for firefighting and take some of the burden off the U.S. Forest Service by creating a permanent fund for devastating blazes, under legislation introduced Thursday by key House Democrats.
As wildfire seasons have grown increasingly expensive over the last decade, the cost of fighting fires has eaten an ever larger portion of the Forest Service budget — now about 48 percent of it. That has left the agency with less money for other programs and priorities.
The new fund would be used only for catastrophic, emergency wildland fire suppression. It would be separate from the money budgeted each year by Congress for anticipated and predicted fire suppression activities for the Forest Service and Interior Department; that allocation would continue.
The amount of money in the new fund would be appropriated annually and based on the average amounts spent by the Forest Service and Interior to suppress catastrophic fires over the preceding five fiscal years.
Last year, the Forest Service spent $741 million more than budgeted and Interior spent $249 million more than budgeted for emergency wildfire suppression, or a total of nearly $1 billion. … [more]
March 8, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Fire News
WOODINVILLE, Wash. — The radical environmental group responsible for the 1998 fires at Vail’s Two Elks Lodge apparently has struck again — in the form of fires that gutted three multimillion-dollar show homes north of Seattle.
Crews battled fires early today at the homes in a suburb north of Seattle. A sign connected to the environmental group Earth Liberation Front was found at the scene, officials said.
The sign — with initials E.L.F. — mocked claims the luxury homes on the “Street of Dreams” were environmentally friendly, according to video images of the sign aired by KING-TV.
“Built Green? Nope black!” the sign said.
No injuries were reported in the fires, which began before dawn in the wooded subdivision and were still smoldering by midmorning. The Snohomish County sheriff’s office estimated damage at $7 million. In addition to the three homes destroyed, two sustained smoke damage. It was previously believed that four homes were destroyed. … [more]
March 3, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Fire News
Some links and extracts:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [here]
Tre Arrow, (born Michael James Scarpitti in 1974), a Florida native, is an environmental activist and politician who gained prominence in the U.S. state of Oregon in the late 1990s.
Arrow was extradited from Canada to Portland Oregon in the United States Government on February 29, 2008 to face charges of arson and conspiracy claimed by the Earth Liberation Front (ELF).
Arrow is wanted by the FBI in connection with the April 15, 2001 arson at Ross Island Sand and Gravel in Portland. Three trucks were damaged in the amount of $200,000. The Earth Liberation Front (ELF) claimed this fire via a written communique. The U.S. Department of Justice says it considers ELF to be the worst “domestic terrorism group.”
Another arson occurred a month later at Ray Schoppert Logging Company in Estacada, Oregon, on June 1, 2001. Two logging trucks and a front loader were damaged, resulting in $50,000 worth of damage. The ELF did not claim responsibility, but the explosions were similarly created by milk jugs filled with gasoline, and a fuse made from incense and a pack of matches.
More links and extracts: Read more
March 1, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Fire News
By JOHN CRAMER of the Missoulian [here]
A federal judge in Missoula cleared Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey and the U.S. Forest Service of a contempt threat Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy also ruled that the agency has finally completed his order to review the environmental impact of aerial fire retardant.
But a watchdog group whose lawsuit prompted the showdown said it planned to take new legal action to challenge the Forest Service’s finding that fire retardant causes little harm to fish, plants and other aquatic creatures.
Rey and other Forest Service officials apologized to Molloy for the agency’s tardiness in completing its environmental review, but they maintained they had acted in good faith.
Molloy accepted the apology but said it was “shameful” that it took a threat of contempt to make the Forest Service follow the law.
February 27, 2008 | 1 Comment | Topic: Latest Fire News
Waldron says Ninemile did not help with Black Cat structure protection
by John Q. Murray, The Clark Fork Chronicle, Feb. 20, 2008 [here]
Scott Waldron of Frenchtown Fire slammed the U.S. Forest Service Friday in an appearance before the Montana legislature’s interim study committee on fire policy.
Waldron, in Helena speaking for the Montana State Fire Chiefs’ Association and the Montana County Fire Wardens Association, said the Forest Service should pay for the problems resulting from the agency’s lack of forest management, and alleged that the Forest Service refused to engage in structure protection during the 2007 Black Cat Fire.
In response to questioning from Sen. John Cobb (R-Augusta), Waldron said the people he fights fire with every day from the Ninemile Ranger District “couldn’t engage in and around those structures” during the Black Cat Fire.
That is a problem for two reasons, he said.
First, forest landowners are paying for fire protection on those lands. In the Frenchtown Fire district, those assessments to the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation (DNRC) represent about $60,000 per year. Because the DNRC and the Forest Service share firefighting duties due to the checkerboard pattern of land ownership–the DNRC handles all public land east of Mill Creek, the Forest Service west of Mill Creek–Waldron said he felt the Forest Service had a responsibility to handle structure protection for those taxpayers.
The second issue is firefighter safety, Waldron said. You can’t have one agency pulling off and saying that it is not going to address structure protection. If the incident management team pulls its resources off the fire, the local fire departments will be going on, and that is not safe, he said.
Waldron said his understanding is that the Forest Service is fiscally challenged to fund its operations and has been forced to reduce its initial attack staff. The agency is now moving toward less initial attack on fires that are out of the way. Instead of creating a fire line around every single fire, they will let some burn. But some big fires will become uncontrollable when they get to communities, he said.
February 27, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Fire News
Plenty of environmental groups, longtime critics of the Bush administration, would love to see high-level administration officials behind bars.
Now a small Eugene group is on the verge of putting one there, in a court case the group hopes will reshape the way the U.S. Forest Service fights wildfires across the West.
An irritated federal judge in Montana appears ready to go along with the request by Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, based in Eugene, to hold the Bush administration official who oversees the Forest Service in contempt of court for disobeying his orders.
The judge, Donald Molloy of Missoula, has said that at a hearing Tuesday, he could either jail Mark Rey, the undersecretary of agriculture, place him under house arrest or suspend all use of fire retardant, the red slurry dropped to slow wildfires.
“What the judge is saying is, ‘I’ve had it with these guys,’ ” said Jim Furnish, a former deputy chief of the Forest Service who is following the case.
Few cases have pointed such severe consequences at so high a level in government.
Molloy is overseeing a dispute between the government and the Eugene group that goes where no lawsuit has gone before. It centers around the millions of gallons of fire retardant aerial bombers dump on blazes every year, and what the employee group argues — and Molloy agrees — is the government’s disregard for the environmental impact of chemicals in the retardant… [more]
February 24, 2008 | 2 Comments | Topic: Latest Fire News
By Stephen Barr, Washington Post, Feb. 22, 2008
The Government Accountability Office faulted outsourcing projects at the Forest Service in a report released yesterday, prompting renewed calls for more scrutiny of the Bush administration’s effort to contract out federal jobs, a plan known as competitive sourcing.
The Forest Service does not have a realistic long-term plan for determining which agency jobs should be given to the private sector and does not have reliable data to back up claims of cost savings, the GAO said.
In addition, outsourcing substantial numbers of Forest Service jobs to the private sector could, over time, reduce the agency’s ability to fight fires in the wilderness and to respond to emergencies such as Hurricane Katrina.
“Congress needs to take a long, hard look at the administration’s competitive sourcing agenda after such a damning report,” Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) said. He released the report with Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), who said the administration “played fast and free with the facts in providing a different picture than the reality.”… [more]
February 23, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Fire News
Lawmaker Calls Bush Forest Budget ‘Unmitigated Disaster’ [here]
A Bush administration spending plan that would slash money for the Forest Service could lead to massive layoffs at the agency charged with managing 193 million acres of national forests, Democratic lawmakers said Wednesday.
Spending for the Forest Service would be cut by nearly 8 percent next year, to $4.1 billion, in a budget plan submitted by President Bush.
The plan could mean the loss of more than 2,700 jobs — nearly 10 percent of the agency’s work force — as well as reductions in dozens of non-fire related programs, from road and trail maintenance to state assistance, land acquisition and recreation, lawmakers said.
Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., chairman of the House Appropriations Interior subcommittee, called the budget plan “an unmitigated disaster” that “would cause real harm to our 193-million acre national forest system.”
The only bright spot in the budget was a request to increase spending to fight wildfires by about $148 million to just under $1 billion, Dicks said.
The figure based on the 10-year average of firefighting costs and responds to a frequent complaint by lawmakers that firefighting costs typically exceed the amount budgeted. The Forest Service spent $1.4 billion fighting fires nationwide last year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. The Interior Department spent an additional $450 million.
February 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Fire News
Fight over forest access is 10 years old
By Sean Paige, Orange County Register [here]
January saw the 10th anniversary of President Clinton’s roadless areas rule, but there was little reason to celebrate, since nothing but controversy, acrimony and litigation have come from it. It may as well have been called the “rudderless rule,” given the paralysis and policy confusion it caused – all at a time when the wildfire threat and a forest health crisis call out for more access to public lands, not less.
Environmentalists and a few elite sportsman groups hailed the rule and have fought hard to make it stick; they’re on the vanguard of an effort to turn most public lands into exclusive playgrounds or wilderness areas, unpolluted by the presence of most people and the pursuit of profit. But the rule was ill-conceived and terribly timed.
Ill-conceived because it marked a major change in how a third of our national forests would be managed, yet Congress and the states weren’t consulted (true to Mr. Clinton’s tendency to advance his environmental agenda through executive action); terribly timed because the wildfire threat and looming energy crunch argue for greater access to public lands, not more restrictions.
February 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Fire News
Ashes and carcasses are the aftermath of failed government policies and environmental lawsuits
by Judy Boyle, Range Magazine, Winter 2008
At over 650,000 acres, the Murphy Complex Fire of last summer was the largest range fire in Idaho’s recorded history. Judy Boyle and Range Magazine tell the story of dead livestock, murderous backburns, idle firefighting crews, unkempt Federal lands, crippling enviro lawsuits, and the incineration of overgrown allotments ungrazed due to those lawsuits.
A thousand square miles of sage grouse habitat was destroyed in the Murphy Fire and 75 of the area’s 102 known sage-grouse leks, or breeding areas, incinerated. Newspapers reported flaming jackrabbits dashing across roads and spreading the fire.
For a heartrending account, please read Wildfire–Ashes and Carcasses [here].
February 13, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Wildlife News, Latest Fire News
By T.J. BURNHAM, Western Farmer Stockman
UTAH’S 500,000-acre fire loss of rangeland ranks high among the West’s most devastating agricultural disasters of 2007.
“These are lands rendered virtually unusable for productive grazing,” says Utah Commissioner of Agriculture Leonard Blackham. “The loss of the use of these valuable lands is forcing some ranchers out of business and will have negative impacts on local rural economies as well as wildlife populations.”
Losses due to the fires reached deeply into ranchers’ pockets, according to Utah Partners for Conservation and Development figures. Damages include:
Utah’s 2007 wildfires burned more than 7 million acres
Many ranchers were forced out of business
78 ranches stricken
28 ranches forced to sell off livestock
299 cattle killed
78 sheep lost
1,305 head of livestock remain unaccounted for
$2.3 million in damage to fencing, corrals, water systems and more
38,500 tons of additional feed needed for livestock
$3.8 million spent on needed feed
Four deaths were reported in the massive Milford Flat fire in central Utah…
Utah’s 2007 fire season was a recordsetter in terms of the number of fires fought: more than 66,500 separate fires burned more than 7 million acres. … [more]
February 6, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Fire News
Panel calls for more helicopters, fire engines and firefighters
SAN DIEGO (AP) — A state panel reviewing October’s huge Southern California wildfires called Friday for more night-flying helicopters, fire engines and firefighters — welcome news to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as he champions a new tax to pay for fire upgrades.
The report focuses on how to respond more quickly with overwhelming force to small wildfires before they spread into densely populated suburbs, but it doesn’t offer any price tag for the improvements or recommendations on how to pay for them …
Nearly 2,200 homes were destroyed in simultaneous wind-driven blazes from north of Los Angeles south to the Mexican border, causing more than $2.2 billion in private insurance claims. Federal, state and local agencies spent about $100 million fighting flames that charred about 800 square miles and killed 10 people.
At South Tahoe more than 250 homes were destroyed and 3,072 acres burned during June’s Angora Fire.
The panel of fire chiefs and state officials was created after California’s 2003 fires, which destroyed more than 3,600 homes, many in the same areas as last year’s blazes … [more]
January 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Fire News
The Southern California wildfires in late 2007 impacted more than humans. Wildlife also suffered. Listen to USGS Biologist Robert Fisher describe what USGS scientists discovered about the wildfire impact on wildlife by listening to episode 25 of CoreCast, the USGS podcast.
“Certain groups of animals seem to be disproportionately impacted by the fires, such as non-forest salamanders and shrews,” said Fisher. “We are not sure whether there is a physical change in the landscape after the fires where these animals do not have enough wet habitats to live in or whether there is a toxic effect of ash that may be directly causing mortality.”
Scientists are also concerned about the wildfire impact on the landlocked southern steelhead rainbow trout population in the Santa Ana Mountains of Orange County, Calif., because it may be the last genetically pure form of its kind in these mountains. Most other fish populations in this area have been wiped out over the past 20 years due to drought and flood conditions.
“When I was in the Santa Ana Mountains in July, there seemed to be a little more than 100 rainbow trout of all different size classes, scattered in about a quarter of a mile in the canyon, primarily in 10 to 12 pools,” said Fisher. “So it really is a restricted area, a restricted population, and any additional stresses in that type of situation are really going to have an impact on them.”
While examining a post-wildfire burn site, scientists observed extreme dry ravel events - a river of rocks - falling down hillsides and filling up the pools of water where the trout live. If the trout survived the dry ravel, the next impact could be when rain mixes with the dry ravel, and the mixture begins to move. This mixture could fill in the creek systems in the canyon and remove the rest of the water sources, Fisher said… [more]
January 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Wildlife News, Latest Fire News
