Butte Complex fire oficials meet with fire victims

Free Haz-Mat cleanups, Angry residents in Concow, Fusees and Marijuana, Back burns and Firing operations, Rumors hopefully put to bed... Butte Complex fires have some continuing controversy exposed in this great Paradise Post article.

Butte Complex Fires - Concow, California
Near Concow road, Dozer line, July 9th 08 - Cal Fire News - ROC

Officials meet with fire victims
By Paul Wellersdick
Paradise Post - Article Launched: 07/26/2008

Butte County officials went to the Yankee Hill Grange offering free hazardous materials cleanup, but instead found angry Concow residents who believed their homes were intentionally burned. Residents at the meeting wanted answers from the government they said they distrusted.

Just two minutes into Thursday night's meeting, tensions were seething when Randy Tottle, shirtless and on crutches, yelled at 1st District Supervisor Bill Connelly asking him who lit the flares that burned his house down.

"I can't get answers from anybody," Tottle said.

Connelly said he didn't hold it against Tottle for being upset.

"If you can't handle it don't get in politics," Connelly said.

Connelly was there to defend his constituents, many of which, especially in the hills of his district, don't trust government, he said.

"They're worried government will overstep boundaries and spy on them and check out their cash crops," he said. "We're not trying to spy on anyone."

Tottle was sure his home was burned by a back burn gone wrong and that flares thrown around his home proved it. He was also sure government wasn't trying to help him.

"This is the eighth time I've been to these meetings," he said. "All they want to do is pat each other on their backs."

Some residents agreed with Tottle and left the meeting to find their own information from friends outside the grange.

"That's all this is - lip service," Archie Davis said just before kick-starting his Harley Davidson motorcycle and roaring off down Big Bend Road He said his property, at the end of Concow Road, was burned because of his marijuana garden.

"The fire that burned my home was lit intentionally," he said. "Some people don't have homes to come back to and they want to take more from us."

His wife Laurel Davis said they didn't want government's help.

"No I don't need anymore help, they already burned my house down," she said. Scrap metal companies offered free cleanup but the family was handling it and even making a living doing it, Laurel said.

Some welcomed help including their neighbor, Lou Kearns.

"I think this is great," she said. "It's not their fault."

Kearns said she would take advantage of free hazardous material cleanups.

"If they want to come in and clean up all my paint cans that's fine," she said.

The tight-knit Concow community would rebuild itself, Kearns said.

"We're tough, I know 100 people who lost their homes," she said. "I know all these people. We love this hill."

Government officials in the grange that night didn't start the fires, Kearns said.

"These guys can't be held accountable for how it started," she said.

She was sure a back burn was responsible, but it wasn't to control anybody's marijuana gardens, she said.

"I think they (fouled up) the back burn," she said. "They didn't know what they were doing when they lit it. They shouldn't have lit it and they should've listened to the locals who told them not to."

Concow resident Pete Moak said he told firefighters not to burn.

"I knew the winds would come up because they hadn't for seven or 10 days," he said.

But he doesn't blame CAL FIRE, he said.

"I don't blame them," he said. "(Concow residents) were going to get burned out regardless. You can't stop a wildfire going 40 mph."

The burns CAL FIRE started were a drop in a big bucket of fire, Moak said while picking up a stone in the gravel grange parking lot and tossing it in a pickup bed.

"It might be like throwing a pebble in a 500 gallon bucket of water," he said. "People have a way of misconstruing information."

CAL FIRE Public Information Officer Scott McLean said there were no "back burns" in Concow but that people were referring to CAL FIRE's firing operation the evening of July 7. CAL FIRE isn't taking responsibility for the fire, McLean said.

"If we made a mistake we'd be very up front," he said. "Can we be held responsible for an unforecasted weather change?"

CAL FIRE didn't make a mistake, he said. And CAL FIRE has an open-door policy and isn't hiding anything.

"If mistakes were made we'd definitely be up front about it," he said. "We'd be more than happy to deal with it accordingly."

McLean said he knew rumors were spreading that CAL FIRE was told not to perform the firing operation by locals.

"I don't have any proof of that," he said.

CAL FIRE knows the history of the area and decided to start the operation because all the conditions were right, he said. Winds were calm, the topography was in their favor, the humidity was relatively high and the temperatures were cool, McLean said. CAL FIRE looks at the fuel bed, weather and dozer lines when deciding on a firing operation, McLean said.

"If one of those items is in question we don't burn," he said.

CAL FIRE takes time to plan firing operations, he said.

"We weren't going to do something haphazard," he said. "It was a controlled event."

The firing operation was meant to slow the fire that was making its way to Concow by reducing the fire's fuel, McLean said.

"The fire was coming," he said. "It was inevitable, it wasn't if but when."

The operation went as planned. But as the firing operation was about wrapped up, around 12 to 1 a.m. the weather turned for the worse, McLean said. Humidity went from 43 to 21 percent, winds increased to 41 mph and the temperature increased 10 degrees, he said.

"It was not a predicted event," he said. "It picked up in less than an hour. What can you do?"

It wasn't the firing operation that burned people's homes, he said.

"Was the fire caused by the firing operation? No," he said.

CAL FIRE does use "fusies" similar to road flares in firing operations, but as to the ones found in marijuana gardens, McLean said he couldn't comment.

"I'm not going to touch that," he said.

CAL FIRE does know where the gardens are for legal purposes, he said.

"We do have to be careful with the inmates, not to say they'd do anything," he said. "We know those gardens are in there. What can you say, that's a law enforcement issue."