Homeowners Seek Damages Against Government for California Wildfire

A lawyer representing a class of homeowners affected by the largest wildfire in California history urged an appeals court today to hold the federal government responsible for damages in the Cedar Fire of 2003, which consumed more than 273,000 acres, destroyed 2,232 houses, and killed 15 people.

The lawyer, Mark Grotefeld of Grotefeld & Hoffmann in Chicago, argues the government should be held liable—through inverse condemnation—for creating the conditions in which the “mega-fire” erupted in the Cleveland National Park in San Diego. Some residents affected by the blaze have been unable to rebuild. “This was not a small fire by any standard,” Grotefeld says. “It was six times the size of the District of Columbia.” The U.S. Court of Federal Claims last year sided with the government and dismissed the case.

For more than a century, the U.S. Forest Service has responded to and extinguished fires—to protect wildlife, timber, and recreation in national parks—rather than let blazes burn naturally and fade away. Fire, however, is part of the ecology of forests and eliminates the underbrush—the so-called “fuel”—that helps fires spread. The Justice Department’s Katherine Hazard, arguing today in court, says the government is not directly responsible for the Cedar Fire in San Diego. Authorities blame a lost hunter for sparking the blaze, which burned for five days, according to court records. Grotefeld says the ignition source is irrelevant.

Federal Circuit Judges Richard Linn, Haldane Robert Mayer, and Kimberly Moore did not immediately rule today. Linn says he sees strong parallels between cases of wildfire and flood. In a 1948 case cited in briefs, Cotton Land Co. v. United States, the government was held responsible for permanent flooding tied to the building of a dam. The government did not start the Cedar Fire, but the government does not make it rain, either, Moore says.

Comments

[SoCal4Truth]

This lawyer from Chicago is completely ignorant of Southern California Fire Ecology.

Fact #1: The Cedar Fire burned in primarily shrubland plant communities NOT forests. Shrubland communities do not have "underbrush." If indeed this case is predicated on the assumption that "Fire, however, is part of the ecology of forests" then it does not apply to the geographic area in question.

Fact #2: Scientific studies have overwhelmingly shown that fire suppression policy in shrubland ecosystems has had NO effect on the subsequent intensity and size of fires in said ecosystems.

Fact #3: Historical data shows that during this ostensible century of fire suppression, the number of fires per year has actually INCREASED in Southern California. If in fact the Cedar Fire was a result of not allowing fires to burn over the past century how does this lawyer from Chicago account for the INCREASE in fire activity in the given area over that same century?

Fact #4: The recent Witch and Harris fires of October 2007 burned tens of thousands of acres in the footprint of the cedar fire. That is, areas that burned just four years prior burned AGAIN.

[Mike]

That's not the worst of it. Read this story:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,101763,00.html

The fire could have been contained if a night water drop had been made but the forest service had already put the helos to bed for the night and didn't want to drop.

Turns out just last week they decided that yes they would allow night water drops from now on. They decided it wasn't all that dangerous after all. Of course the fact that San Diego Fire has been doing night ops for the last few years didn't sway their decision...