Anchorage residents charged with sparking Sockeye fire

PALMER — A man and woman face criminal charges in connection with the Sockeye fire, authorities said.

Greg Imig, 59, and Amy Dewitt, 42, both of Anchorage, face eight counts each in connection with the 7,200-acre fire that destroyed 55 homes and 44 other structures, according to court records and a Division of Forestry press release.

Charges include four unclassified felonies: failure to have a burn permit required in a state forest, burning without clearing the area, the uncontrolled spread of a fire, and the failure to extinguish the fire. And four class-A misdemeanors, which carry a potential one-year maximum sentence on conviction: criminally negligent burning, and three counts of reckless endangerment. Under Alaska law, Imig and Dewitt are libel for up to twice the costs of fighting the fire, or $16 million, thus far.

Although fireworks were not deemed the cause of the fire, investigators say they did find evidence of spent fireworks at the scene, court documents show.

The fire started on property co-owned by Imig at 25629 Ringler Circle, a block away from Sockeye Avenue, which gave the now-notorious fire its name, according to an affidavit written by Thomas Greiling, with the Department of Natural Resources. Forestry officials also used aerial photographs to pinpoint the most likely origin for the fire, Greiling wrote.

“This property was a well-kept recreational property with a large parking location for vehicles, open areas of manicured lawn with a camper trailer and separate yard deck, all surrounded by forested land,” the affidavit reads in part.

The property did not have a running water connection, and Imig and Dewitt had at least three or four burn piles the afternoon the fire started, to burn brush from the previous year.

“The burn piles were located on the edge of and in direct contact with forested land, with no evidence of a fire break of any kind to prevent the spread of fire from the burn piles,” Greiling wrote.

Dewitt placed a few boards over one of the piles while she continued to work because she was uncertain whether that fire was extinguished, and though she would know if the boards lit off.

“This particular pile was identified as the specific point of origin where fire continued to smolder and then crept out of the hot ash into the forested land, as indicated by fire spread patterns in all the various natural wildland fuels in the vicinity of that particular burn pile,” Greiling wrote.

When the fire became evident, Dewitt and Imig fled in a motor home. Dewitt did call 911 to report the fire, but didn’t mention the address, or the likely cause of the fire. The couple left behind a chainsaw, gas cans, and motor home jackpads, Greiling wrote.

Criminal prosecution in human-caused wildfires is fairly infrequent, Mowry said.

“When we go out and respond to a report of … a debris burn and we find out that something’s wrong, we typically use that as an educational opportunity to clue people in to what they’re doing wrong,” Mowry said. “We don’t want a bunch of people running around out there with criminal records because they didn’t have the fire hose or something like that.”

But in the case of the Sockeye fire — which forced the evacuation of hundreds of Willow residents, threatened to engulf the heart of the community, and briefly became the nation’s top firefighting priority — the severity merited criminal charges, Mowry said.

Imig is the listed vice president of the family-owned Imig Audio/Video, whose featured projects include the Egan Convention Center, the Rasmuson Foundation Conference Room, the CIRI Executive Conference Room, the Matanuska Telephone Association, and the Denali Park Welcome Center.

Dewitt’s Facebook page no longer showed up in search results Monday afternoon.

Imig and Dewitt are scheduled for arraignment at 8:30 a.m., July 28. The fire-related charges constitute Dewitt’s third misdemeanor charge in three years, though neither Imig nor Dewitt has been charged with fire-related charge.

An investigation into the Card Street Fire was still underway, Mowry said.

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.