Oregon wildfire season predicted to start early, end late

The state has the ability to bill people who start wildfires with "willful, malicious or negligent" intent. A lawsuit filed this week in Lane County seeks to recover $13,800 -- plus interest -- for the costs of fighting a 2008 wildfire started by a 16-year-old boy who threw fireworks from a moving vehicle.

(File photo/2014)

Of course, no one in his or her right mind wants to start a forest fire.

But a lawsuit filed earlier this week by the state of Oregon might give careless folks additional pause: The state's Department of Forestry is suing to recover the costs of fighting a forest fire officials say was started by a 16-year-old boy who shot fireworks out of a moving vehicle.

The lawsuit states that back on July 10, 2008 -- on a hot, dry stretch of road in Lane County -- Skyler D. Adair lit some fireworks and threw them out the window. The fireworks were designed to emit showers of sparks, and those sparks scorched 1.6 acres of forest, according to the suit, filed in Lane County Circuit Court.

The state spent roughly $14,000 to extinguish the blaze.

A few months after the incident, Adair was found in violation of Oregon's fire prevention rules and ordered to pay $109 in fines and fees, according to court records.

Forestry spokesman Rod Nichols told The Oregonian/OregonLive that the state has tried unsuccessfully to get Adair, now 23, to pay up in the seven years since the fire.

The suit states that Adair has paid $220 toward that bill, meaning he still owes about $13,800 -- plus 10 percent annual interest.

The lawsuit also seeks to $5,000 to $7,500 from Adair's mother -- Tracey Leann Williams, also know by the last name Lamberty. That's the amount the state claims she's liable for under Oregon law for the actions of her then-minor son.

Neither Adair or his mother could be reached for comment for this story.

Nichols, the forestry spokesman, said about two-thirds of Oregon's wildfires are started by people.

"The vast majority of those are accidental, just carelessness," Nichols said. "There's a tiny percentage that are arson."

Roughly one-third of wildfires are caused by lightning, Nichols said. Human-caused wildfires are typically smaller than lightning-caused fires, which often start on remote lands with no easy access. In contrast, firefighters often can easily reach human-caused fires because there are roads nearby.

State law calls for officials to recover fire-suppression costs when the people who started the fires were "willful, malicious or negligent."

Forestry officials weren't able to provide examples to The Oregonian/OregonLive of those billed by the government. But cases occasionally do make news headlines.

A 23-year-old Warm Springs woman was ordered to pay $7.9 million after she was criminally convicted of igniting more than 51,000 acres to give her "bored" firefighter friends something to do in July 2013.

Five men in their 20s and 30s were ordered to pay more than $17,000 to defray the $88,000 costs of extinguishing a 38-acre wildfire east of Bend in August 2012. The men had sparked the blaze while target shooting explosives.

And across state lines -- in Idaho -- a man was ordered to pay $8,100 after playing around with fireworks that started a July 2014 fire. The fire forced residents of 20 homes to evacuate as a precaution.

-- Aimee Green

agreen@oregonian.com

503-294-5119

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