Fire under trial

PALMER -- Eighteen jurors and a standing-room-only audience listened to opening arguments Friday in the class action lawsuit against the Alaska Division of Forestry. The plaintiffs are accusing the division of negligence during its response to the Miller's Reach fire of 1996.

The fire burned out of control for about 12-and-a-half days in June 1996, but the plaintiff's attorneys said Friday their case will focus on the 27 hours leading up to the firestorm. During those hours -- between 4 p.m. June 2 and 7 p.m. June 3 -- the plaintiffs say forestry officials were negligent when they sent local volunteers home, that forestry mismanaged the remaining equipment and manpower, and even that they failed to bring enough fire hose to the scene.

Plaintiff's attorney John Hinderaker told the jury that one forestry firefighter will testify he was smoking marijuana on the morning of June 3 and that later that day he got lost in the woods. The fireman was sent to round up more fire hose and will testify that when he eventually found his team's camp, he climbed into his tent and went to sleep, Hinderaker said.

Hinderaker also said he has witnesses who will testify that forestry firefighters lit "burn-out" fires before the fire got away on June 3. A burn-out is a controlled fire used to eliminate fuel on the ground. The state will argue that no burn-out fires were set, the state's attorneys said.

Hinderaker told the jury the fire should have been put out by a continuation of the efforts of June 2, when members of the Houston Volunteer Fire Department arrived on the scene and began pumping water on a five- to seven-acre blaze.

"This case represents the only investigation into the escape of the Miller's Reach Fire on June 3," Hinderaker told the jury.

A report produced a month after the fire by a state-hired review team claims -- as the attorneys representing the state will -- that the fire was handled with normal procedures and that unexpected high winds on June 3 had more to do with the 12-day firestorm than the alleged mismanagement of fire fighting resources.

"Fire and wind -- two forces of nature -- combined and overcame some of the best fire fighters in the world," attorney Tim Lamb said in his opening arguments in defense of Forestry.

Lamb works for a private, Anchorage-based law firm that was retained by the state after the plaintiffs filed their lawsuit in 1998. Deputy Attorney General Scott Nordstrand said it's not uncommon for the state to retain a private firm for defense against a civil suit.

Nordstrand -- who was recently hired by Gov. Frank Murkowski's administration -- said the transition to a new governor and new attorney general has not caused any interruptions or lack of continuity in the state's defense against the lawsuit.

"[The private attorneys] have been here all along, but the Department of Law has been involved in certain aspects of this case," Nordstrand said.

Some facts about the fire are not in dispute. Both sides agree volunteer fire departments from Willow, Meadow Lakes and Big Lake joined Houston at the scene on June 2 , as did the Alaska Division of Forestry firefighters. Forestry set up a command post on Miller's Reach Road at the same spot where the Houston volunteers had originally set up their pumper truck. Forestry eventually declared the fire contained at about 60 acres and sent the local firefighters home. The next day, the fire leaped out of the contained area during mop-up and eventually burned 37,000 acres and caused the evacuation of about 1,000 people. No one was killed.

In his opening arguments, Hinderaker told the jury forestry has policy manuals that require "aggressive and continuous" fire fighting in areas deemed to be "critical protection" areas -- in other words, areas where a wildfire can endanger people. The local volunteers and the Houston pumper truck were all gone by 2 a.m. on June 3, Hinderaker told the jury.

"[The volunteers] knew the fire had not been put out," Hinderaker said. He went on to say that for a period of about 10 hours no water at all would be put on the 60-acre fire area. The plaintiff's contend that the June 3 effort was "cut way back" from the initial attack on the fire and that cut-back -- not unexpected high winds -- was the reason the fire burned out of control.

"They were fighting the fire, not in a way that was aggressive, but in a way that was leisurely," Hinderaker said. "In fact, the incident commander spent part of the afternoon [on June 3] giving interviews with television crews."

Each of the attorneys took about one hour to deliver their opening arguments. Lamb told the jury that during mop-up it is vital to have only firefighters with a "red card" certification in the fire zone. That's because red card holders are not only knowledgeable about mop-up techniques but have also passed physical tests -- in short their are ready and able to evacuate a mop-up area in the event of a firestorm.

Lamb said the jury would hear that just such an evacuation of firefighters occurred before the evacuation of the surrounding neighborhoods was ordered.

"[When fire fighters returned] the chain saws were melted down into tiny pieces of aluminum," Lamb said.

The time-line from the state's report on the Miller's Reach shows the fire jumping from outside the contained area at 7:15 p.m., June 3. The evacuation of the subdivisions on Miller's Reach Road was ordered at 7:40, and the evacuation was extended to neighborhoods along Big Lake Road 15 minutes later.

The state will argue that its firefighters did nothing wrong and that the lawsuit arose out of a combination of rumors and speculation that started June 2 and grew during the firestorm and continued to be circulated afterwards, Lamb said. He outlined with a chart a group of people the state claims were at the center of the rumor mill that allegedly spawned the lawsuit.

"If you repeat it a million times it becomes a fact. We are here today because a rumor was repeated a million times," Lamb said. " … Not one person died as a result of this fire."