Ex Judge’s Fire Backfired

DAYTON - This year's fire season in the Touchet Valley brings back some memories of the Columbia Complex fire that raged four years ago and became the nation's top firefightingpriority that summer.

They're memories that most who lived through the 100,000-acre fire would just as soon forget.

But starting at the Co­lumbia Court House on Monday, some people whose lives were affected by the devastating blazes will relive the experience in front of a jury. Ironically for one of them, former Columbia County District Court Judge Charles Thronson, the courthouse is a very famil­iar place. Except this time, Thronson will find himself in a different part of the courtroom - in the witness stand as a defendant. In a civil suit filed against him by his neighbors, Thronson is being accused

Backfired

of setting a backfire on Ca­hill Mountain that allegedly destroyed their commercial timber stands. His actions, which he said were intended to pro­tect his own property under imminent threat from the Columbia Complex fires, were the subject of a 2007 investigation by the Depart­ment

of Natural Resources that charged Thronson's "burnout" caught at least one firefighter between blazes and had to be controlled by crews fighting the nearby wildfires.

In April 2008, neighbor­ing property owners Gale Akers and Robert Holling­sworth sued Thronson, say­ing his actions cost them nearly $90,000 in lost tim­ber

and claiming they are owed three times that amount (treble damages) under a Washington law that extracts a heavy penalty from those who unlawfully "cut down, girdle or otherwise injure" trees on someone's property.

The case is just now com­ing to trial with jury selection starting Monday in a court presided by visiting Benton County Judge Carrie Runge.

None of the parties or their attorneys agreed to be interviewed for this story. But court documents and the separate DNR investiga­tion report provide plenty of background on the case. They paint Thronson as an old-school, homegrown firefighter who had neither formal updated training nor authorization to take the ac­tions the plaintiffs allege cost them their timber - though one firefighting professional interviewed for the DNR investigation said he would have done the same. The Columbia Complex fire was one of the worst in this area's history. Accord­ing to a state report, it was started by lightening on Aug. 21, burned 107,250 primarily forested and rural acres east and southeast of Waitsburg and Dayton, injured seven people and destroyed 28 structures. More than 1,000 firefightersfrom far and wide battled the fast-moving target for several months. Total cost and damages have been esti­mated at nearly $25 million. The suit recalls how Akers and Hollingsworth bought their land in 1991 with the goal of running it as a com­mercial

timber business, planting tens of thousands of seedlings on it earlier this decade. It charges that about three days after lightening started the fires and they were migrating throughout the county, Thronson took actions that "intentionally" damaged or destroyed their property.

The accusers say Thron­son had "no authority, re­sponsibility, right, permis­sion or approval to ignite fires on property belonging to plaintiffs," or to ignite fires that he knew or should have known would "result in burning timber on plaintiffs' property."

Further, Akers and Hol­lingsworth say there were no flames touching any of the properties, including Thron­son's, and that his acts were "not in response to any emer­gency or imminent threat of unavoidable harm." Thronson does not deny causing the backfire to be set (he had help from oth­ers whom he asked to ignite them), but in a deposition taken in September he vigor­ously defendes his actions. Fed by winds of up to 15 miles per hour, the fire approaching all the parties' properties on Cahill Moun­tain

was very fast and his efforts were intended to save the land, he said. State law re­quires that every person with knowledge of a fire must use "every reasonable effort to suppress the fire."

In his deposition, Thron­son describes how the fire was coming towards him.

"A man could have run sideways and gotten on the other side of this and saved himself, but it come a'galloping through here, and when it hit the top of this ridge it sounded like a freight train, just a 'whoo,' here she comes, there's no question about it," he told the court.

Thronson said he and his friends worked for several days clearing strips as fire­guards to shield the proper­ties from the fast-moving burn. In the end, when it appeared the firewas fast ap­proaching, a backfire seemed like the only way to try to stop it.

The former judge's prop­erty encompassed 500 acres of grassland in CRP (Crop Reduction Program), a cabin and a barn. Thronson, who now practices as a defense attorney, was a Columbia County District Court Judge from 1974 - 2002.

In his deposition, he re­calls how he began helping his family and community fight fires as a teenager and later joined the rural fire district, though he never took any formal classes in fire­fighting techniques.

The 2007 DNR investiga­tion reported mixed reactions to Thronson's actions. It took him to task for engaging in "voluntary suppression" ef­forts he did not communicate to the firefighting authorities in the area. Columbia County Fire District Captain Jeromy Phinney told investigator Dennis Heryford he did not believe the firewithin Rodg­ers Gulch was threatening Cahill Mountain at that time. Heryford himself reported that "directional burn indi­cators I observed along the north side of Cahill Moun­tain Road suggested the fire had burned from the road's north edge towards the north-northwest in a slow, low-intensity fire until it was pushed to the southwest, south, east and northwest by WNW winds gusting to 10 miles per hour. "Once the fire started burning to the east, northeast and south it rapidly increased in size and intensity, consum­Fire ing acres of young Ponderosa Pine trees within a plantation to the north, northeast and east of the fire's origin," he said.

Columbia County Fire District #3 Battalion Chief Patrick Barker found it nec­essary to ignite more back­fires to alter the advance of the Thronson fire. Bob Gear, Benton County Fire District #1 Deputy In­cident Commander, told Heryford at the time that he could understand Thronson's actions, saying he had lit backfires on his property several days before to pre­vent the approaching fire from threatening his vacation home and that he "probably would have done the same thing" as Thronson. But Don Norris, Safety Officer for Columbia County Fire District #3, said about Thronson's fire: "I didn't think it did help." Rick Turner, the same district's fire chief, said his "crew's safety was being compromised because no one knew someone was burning out in advance of the fire," though he couldn't tell whether Thronson's back­fires accelerated the fire's advance or not. Heryford concluded "there are serious and ex­isting concerns regarding the lighting of 'backfires' or voluntary suppression activity by individuals not assigned to the suppression effort. They are unfamiliar with the integral details of the overall fire-suppression plan and normally do not com­municate

their suppression activities with those who are officially in overwatch of the fire's suppression. "Although normally well intended, an individual's independent suppression ac­tivity quite often endangers the lives of other fire fighters, citizens and personnel as­sociated with the suppression effort of the wild land fire. Most likely their intent is not malicious nor intentionally destructive, but quite often the results are less than posi­tive."