A8
NEWS
Blue Mountain Eagle
Burn
Continued from Page A1
And in the aftermath of this
burn, there are accusations on
both sides of this contentious
debate about which actions
on that day deserve the blame.
Critics of the Forest Service and
the affected landowners feel
the conditions on the day never
should have allowed the burn
to proceed. Others, including
Forest Service personnel who
planned and executed the burn,
say that by arresting the burn
boss at the moment of maxi-
mum danger, the planned oper-
ation and the safety of the crews
were placed in jeopardy.
“Other individuals were able
to pick up the slack, fortunately,
that were well trained,” Sno-
dgrass said. “He put not only
my guys at risk out there, their
safety, but he put that land at
risk as well as, you know, all of
Bear Valley.”
Wednesday, October 26, 2022
THE LETTER OF THE LAW
RECKLESS BURNING
ORS 164.335 • A person commits the crime of reckless burning if the person reck-
lessly damages property of another by fire or explosion.
RECKLESSNESS
ORS 161.085 (9) • “Recklessly,” when used with respect to a result or to a cir-
cumstance described by a statute defining an offense, means that a person
is aware of and consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk
that the result will occur or that the circumstance exists. 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.”
The buildup
In 2015 the Canyon Creek
Fire, which started with light-
ning strikes on Malheur
National Forest land and spread
to private ground, ultimately
burned over 110,000 acres and
destroyed 43 structures in Grant
County.
There is general agreement
that a hundred years of fire sup-
pression has led to forests that
are overfilled with fuel, a sit-
uation made more dangerous
by a prolonged drought. Part
of Canyon Creek’s legacy is
the strongly held and polarized
views on how to best prevent
catastrophic fires in the future.
Proponents of prescribed
burning see the scorched
canyons along US 395 as a
reminder of the stakes, the
need to create buffers, remove
built-up fuels and restore forests
to a pre-suppression state where
they can better survive the inev-
itable blaze, while critics of fed-
eral land management and the
Forest Service see a constant
reminder of botched contain-
ment efforts and mismanaged
public land that only fuel their
distrust.
“Every individual has a dif-
ferent opinion and motivation,”
said Craig Trulock, supervisor
of the 1.7 million-acre Malheur
National Forest. “You have peo-
ple that are just anti-federal and
don’t want any federal agency
doing anything that could affect
their lands. Others don’t like
prescribed burning for various
reasons, whether it’s risk or a
sense that it doesn’t achieve
what we should be doing out
there because they want every
log to go on a log truck. And
then you have people that are
saying, ‘When you burn, would
you please burn my property as
well?’”
According to Trulock, the
burn had been going to plan.
“We were within prescription
on the burn,” Trulock said, not-
ing he couldn’t say much more
as the incident is now the sub-
ject of an active federal and
local investigation.
The fire was the second
day of prescribed burning in
as many weeks. The burn area
planned for Wednesday, Oct.
19, was 300 acres, including
trees and meadowland within
the Malheur National Forest in
an operation involving federal,
state and contract firefighting
crews, according to information
from the Forest Service.
This was among the first
prescribed burns to be allowed
after a new set of restrictions
came into effect this year, fol-
lowing high-profile cases of
prescribed burns getting out of
control on federal land and caus-
ing massive damage, includ-
ing the Calf Canyon/Hermit’s
Peak blaze in New Mexico,
which burned several hundred
thousand acres and hundreds
of structures this spring. After a
90-day pause on all prescribed
burns, a revised set of restric-
tions was published.
As part of those new rules,
before ignitions could begin in
Bear Valley, a go/no-go check-
list had to be completed on site.
This day’s final check rep-
resented the end of a multiyear
process. That process involved
an environmental analysis of
the project area that included
commercial logging, noncom-
mercial thinning and burning
treatments. The burn plan takes
the form of a 100-plus-page
document, updated year over
year as the preparatory steps of
thinning, fuel removal and tree
grinding continued, all to get
the area into ideal shape for a
burn.
As part of the new rules, the
Tony Chiotti/Blue Mountain Eagle
Burn boss Rick Snodgrass monitors the Starr 6 burn in Bear Valley on Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2022.
Tony Chiotti/Blue Mountain Eagle
A federal fire crew member uses a drip torch to ignite ground
fuel as part of a prescribed burn in the Malheur National Forest
on Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2022.
Tony Chiotti/Blue Mountain Eagle
A Forest Service employee patrols the Starr 6 prescribed burn on a quad on Wednesday, Oct. 19,
2022.
final ignition authorization had
to be signed by four people: the
agency administrator, local unit
line officer, burn boss, and fire
management officer or duty
officer. This process only autho-
rizes ignitions for 24 hours, in
effect giving all four officers
veto power over the burn based
on that day’s conditions.
On this day, all four indi-
viduals assessed the condi-
tions, and all four signatures
were affixed to the burn autho-
rization, meaning ignitions
could begin. One of those four
signatures belonged to Rick
Snodgrass.
Smoldering tensions
The ignition was delayed for
about 45 minutes while crews
did a grid search to ensure there
were no cows in the burn area
after hearing reports that the
Hollidays still had some “strag-
glers” left on national forest
land, a common occurrence as
cows are seasonally moved off
grazing allotments. The Windy
Point Ranch allotment specified
an Oct. 15 “off date,” but Chad
Holliday explained that some
fence that was burned the pre-
vious week, along with gates
being left open by fire person-
nel, meant he couldn’t be sure
the cattle were all out.
Initially, the burn went
according to plan, with light
winds of 0-3 mph and the heat
of the fire drawing smoke up
into a clean, bent column over
the county road. The fire moved
slowly across 50 acres over the
course of five hours, with fire
crews monitoring the progress
of its leading front and continu-
ing drip-torch ignitions.
Ignitions paused in the after-
noon, to begin again a couple
hours later. It was then that the
wind picked up and a few trees
in the interior of the already-
burned area torched, sending
up “duffers” with the smoke, up
and over the road.
Members of the Holliday
family, who own the Windy
Point Ranch and other land
adjacent to the burn area, were
standing across the county road
from the fire as an ember from
the burn area touched town on
their ranch, starting a new fire
that soon began to spread.
“We were glad to see Ore-
gon Department of Forestry
and Grayback (contract crews)
show up,” said Mandy Taylor,
Chad Holliday’s sister.
ODF and Grayback For-
estry crews were contracted
to work alongside Forest Ser-
vice employees throughout
the day’s burn, but due to ten-
sions between the landown-
ers and the federal crews, they
were eventually asked to take
over mop-up after the flames of
the spot fire were extinguished,
according to Trulock, who said
the move was meant to calm
tensions on the scene.
Those kinds of tensions are
not unusual.
“I think in a lot of parts of
Oregon, it’s just a very real
experience for federal employ-
ees to have a lot of hostility
towards what they’re doing
right now,” said Christopher
Adlam, a regional fire special-
ist for Oregon State Universi-
ty’s Extension Service. “I’m not
saying that people don’t also
appreciate firefighters and thank
firefighters. But it’s a pretty
common thing in some parts of
Oregon for federal employees
to face hostility.”
Indeed, federal crews called
the regional interagency dis-
patch center on both days of
the burn to report verbal harass-
ment, threats and aggressive
driving through the smoke,
and to request law enforcement
assistance on the scene.
The Hollidays maintain they
were welcoming and coopera-
tive with federal crews, provid-
ing access to their land in order
to contain the blaze. But as the
fire spread and crews worked to
contain it, the Hollidays called
911. They didn’t call to report
the fire. They asked for the sher-
iff. “We knew that somebody
was doing something wrong,”
said Taylor.
Planning for contingencies
If you use the phrase “con-
trolled burn” in the vicin-
ity of firefighters operating a
prescribed burn, you will be
corrected.
This is fire. You don’t con-
trol it. The best you can plan
for is to manage it and be pre-
pared if the fire has other ideas.
Adlam points out that spill-
over fires like the one that hap-
pened in Bear Valley are rare
occurrences but can still have a
huge impact on people. “I think
that, the last 20 years, we’ve
had one other occurrence of a
burn crossing over from fed-
eral land onto private land in
Oregon,” he said.
The Malheur National For-
est supervisor notes that the
spillover was quickly brought
under control.
“They caught it with the
resources they had on scene,”
said Trulock. He noted that
the number of crew on scene
before the fire jumped was far
more than their own burn plan
had recommended, and that
the new rules and added cau-
tion likely led to their ability
to ultimately contain the spot.
“We didn’t use any aviation
or anything. The only addi-
tional resource we brought on
was that dozer, and that was
to really secure the edge of the
spot so that they could then
mop it up. So we were staffed
enough to actually catch some-
thing like this.”
The Grant County Sher-
iff’s Office and the Forest Ser-
vice estimated the size of the
spot fire as approximately 20
acres. Chad Holliday estimates
it as closer to 40, after measur-
ing the perimeter of the area at
“exactly one mile.”
‘Somebody’s got to be
held accountable’
As the federal crews were
attempting to control the spot
fire on the ranch, McKin-
ley arrived. Chad Holliday
received a call from his sister,
who was on the scene and told
him to get home. He arrived to
see Sheriff McKinley speaking
with people along the fence.
“I walked up, and Todd
said, ‘Chad, right now you’re
(being) videorecorded. You’re
the spokesman for the ranch.
Would you like to press
charges?’ And I said, ‘Abso-
lutely. Somebody’s got to be
held accountable.’”
Holliday said McKinley
then went directly to Snodgrass
on the county road and “put the
cuffs on him.”
The Eagle has filed a pub-
lic records request for body-
cam footage or any other video
taken at the scene during this
incident by the Grant County
Sheriff’s Office. The newspa-
per is also seeking any other
video footage captured at the
scene that could further help
establish the sequence of
events.
‘A reasonable person’
The fire was set in the days
before predicted rain, and will
likely prove to be the last of
this year’s short burn season.
But the issues surrounding pre-
scribed burning and federal
land management, especially
as it impacts private landown-
ers, will undoubtedly remain a
flashpoint in Grant County.
For now, as the investiga-
tion continues, McKinley is
playing things close to the vest.
He’s declined offers to com-
ment on the case beyond his
initial press release, which said
“details cannot be released at
this time.”
Grant County District
Attorney Jim Carpenter has
been slightly more forthcom-
ing, stating in his own press
release that just because the
burn boss was working as part
of a federal crew doesn’t mean
he will be shielded from poten-
tial legal consequences.
“To be clear, the employer
and/or position of Snodgrass
will not protect him if it is
determined that he acted reck-
lessly,” he wrote. “That the
USFS was engaging in a pre-
scribed burn may actually
raise, rather than lower, the
standard to which Snodgrass
will be held.”
Carpenter lays out in his
release the full legal standard
for determining if a burn is or
is not “reckless” as defined in
Oregon statute: “The risk must
be of such nature and degree
that disregard thereof consti-
tutes a gross deviation from the
standard of care that a reason-
able person would observe in
the situation.”
McKinley, known as a level
head in the wider context of
Grant County politics, might
not have intended to make a
statement. But this extraordi-
nary arrest has caught national
attention and sparked debate in
the press and online. And now
in the actions of the sheriff and
the actions of the Forest Ser-
vice, both sides see actions that
created real danger.
Critics of the Forest Ser-
vice point to the simple fact
that the fire escaped the lines as
evidence the conditions were
unsafe and that the fire should
never have been approved. To
the Hollidays, and those skepti-
cal of federal land management
in general, it’s a clear measure:
the fire got onto their land and
threatened or destroyed their
property. How could that have
been a reasonable thing to do?
It has also stirred the ire of
wildland firefighter communi-
ties, who fear this development
will set a precedent and only
complicate an already difficult
and dangerous job. And in these
groups’ online conversations, it
is clear many believe that the
arrest created a situation on the
ground that may have added to
the real risk faced by fire crews
in Bear Valley.
“One of the huge watch-
out situations in any fire oper-
ation is a transition in lead-
ership,” said Trulock. “And
that’s when it’s a plan to tran-
sition in leadership. This was
obviously unplanned. What I
would say is there were defi-
nite heightened risks because
of that action. Until leadership
can be reestablished under a
new person, then everybody is
distracted because they know
something happened. And so
it created a huge distraction
in the middle of what I would
consider is a relatively high-
risk operation.”
Adlam, the Extension Ser-
vice fire specialist, agreed.
“The burn boss’s role is
never more important than at
the moment where something
happens that is not part of the
plan,” he said. “If you cut off
the head of an operation before
it’s finished, how is that sup-
posed to be leading to a positive
outcome?”
When reached for comment
on this story, McKinley clari-
fied why he’s reluctant to say
too much at this point.
He said he knows how it
appears in the court of pub-
lic opinion to withhold detail,
but added that as long as it pro-
tects the process he just doesn’t
care. “I just want to respect
the case and not get too much
detail out so that it doesn’t mess
with potential jury pools and
all that,” he said, “because then
we’d have to have (the trial) out
of the area.”
For McKinley, the import-
ant thing is that the facts sur-
rounding this case and the deci-
sions of Rick Snodgrass are
ultimately determined by 12
reasonable people — ideally,
reasonable people from Grant
County.