Carelessness is cause of most wildfires

CROWN KING - Playing with matches, being careless with a campfire, even burning a letter from an estranged husband. Some of the most devastating wildfires in the country’s recent history have been started by people.

In Arizona, the latest wildfire to be caused by man has burned more than 15 square miles, destroyed four homes in the community of Crown King, forced a weeklong evacuation of more than 100 people and cost upward of $2 million.

Despite fire restrictions, an aggressive public-awareness campaign and plenty of publicity about the effects of human-caused fires, fire officials say people just aren’t getting the message. They’re not sure if they ever will.

“It’s a little more depressing, or aggravating, when you know it’s a human-caused start and it could have been prevented,” said John Glenn, chief of fire operations for the federal Bureau of Land Management.

“We’re dealing with Mother Nature all the time and it’s a given that we’re going to have lightning starts, but that component that could be prevented — it’s disturbing to a lot of people in the fire business.”

People caused more than 73,000 wildfires that burned more than 5,300 square miles in 2007, according to the Boise, Idaho-based National Interagency Fire Center.

That’s compared to about 12,200 lightning-caused blazes that burned about 9,100 square miles.

More than 1,500 wildfires erupted in California after lightning strikes on June 21 and have burned more than 814 square miles, but that event was unusual. Like the rest of the country, most fires there are human caused.

Lucas Woolf, lead investigator for the U.S. Forest Service in northern Arizona, said the majority of fires caused by people are the result of carelessness with camp fires.

Some people throw a bottle of water on the fire and think it’s out. Others simply let it burn.

“You’ll hear, 'Oh well, I put it out, it wasn’t smoking when I left,’” Woolf said.

“A lot of them do say, 'Oh, I can’t believe I did that, I love the forest.’ You do hear a lot of remorse.”

Then, Woolf said, there are the people who say they did everything right and refuse to believe their actions led to a wildfire.

Arizona’s “Lane 2” fire near the historic mining town of Crown King began the night of June 28 after a lost hiker left his group to look for a trail, and later started a fire either to signal for help or to stay warm, said Yavapai County sheriff’s spokesman Dwight D’Evelyn.

The steep, rugged area in the Bradshaw Mountains about 50 miles north of Phoenix is blanketed with timber dead or bone dry from years of drought and bark beetle infestation.

“It was not smart because the conditions there are just devastatingly dry and the bark beetle thing — it’s just been a big barbecue,” D’Evelyn said.

“You’ve got to be aware of the surroundings and aware of the restrictions. That should play a role in whether or not starting a fire is the best thing to do.”

The U.S. Forest Service investigation is ongoing, and no arrests have been made. Attempts to reach the hiker were unsuccessful.

The Forest Service’s Woolf said if convicted, those who inadvertently start fires or set signal fires face up to six months in jail, a $5,000 fine, and could possibly be ordered to pay the costs of fighting the fire.