Weather takes stage

PALMER- In the midst of the two-month-long saga that is the Miller's Reach civil suit, the defense Wednesday brought a retired Anchorage National Weather Service forecaster to the stand to back up a claim that an unexpected, unpredicted wind pattern fueled the 1996 Big Lake Fire.

The defense for the state unleashed a wide range of detailed questions on James "Neal" Marchbanks a retired forecaster who specialized in fire weather forecasts. Marchbanks told the jury that, in his study of the 1996 fire, his findings lead him to believe that failed predictions of unusual dry wind gusts sweeping from the northern Alaska Range funneled into the area and turned a smoldering fire into a raging blaze that consumed hundreds of homes.

Marchbanks told jurors that on June 3, 1996 sometime between 7:05 and 7:31 pm, but near the reported break-out at 7:18 p.m., calm winds were replaced with winds up to 40 mph.

Previously that morning another witness for the defense Paul McRoberts formerly of the Big Lake area answered questions about a home video he shot of the fire and the details he captured.

McRoberts' video has become the lone target in the debate of factual visual evidence that the Big Lake fire was sent out-of-control by winds nobody could control nor predict.

In McRoberts' video, swaying trees and floating smoke jumpers were seen blowing with the wind; to the defense this seemed to be the answer.

McRoberts' video was also used in the questioning of Marchbanks who used the video to visually sway the jurors into seeing and believing the wind and the effects that it had in the escape of the fire and the eventual destruction of more than 400 structures across 58 square miles.