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Wildfire fighters return to find their base in Palmer looted
Anchorage Daily News ^ | August 19th, 2009 | MEGAN HOLLAND

Posted on 08/19/2009 5:21:15 PM PDT by george76

PALMER: Destructive thieves take everything that's not nailed down and then some at headquarters.

Daniel Skriloff, an Alaska wildfire fighter, had just come off the line, battling the oppressive heat and smoke of the 12,000-acre Hardluck Creek blaze near Fairbanks, when he got the bad news.

Back at the Palmer-based headquarters for the Pioneer Peak Hotshots, thieves -- as part of a storm of theft and destruction -- broke into and stole his Subaru Legacy from the gated parking lot.

"It sucks," said the third-year firefighter, who was back in Palmer dealing with insurance forms on Tuesday. "You name it, they took it."

The fury touched the headquarters from one end to the other. If it wasn't nailed down, the thieves used axes and crowbars to remove it. Nothing was too trivial to pass up. Pilot bread and peanut butter, backpacks and tents, moose antlers and iPods. All were loaded into stolen vehicles along with $5,000 fire pumps and $1,000 chain saws.

Nearly every one of the 20-some cars parked in the lot -- all belonging to the 40 or so firefighters tackling wildfires up north in the Interior -- had been pilfered. Five cars and trucks were stolen. Tens of thousands of dollars worth of fire-fighting equipment was looted.

As a final insult, they urinated on firefighters' personal clothes pulled out from their lockers.

(Excerpt) Read more at adn.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Government; News/Current Events; US: Alaska
KEYWORDS: firefighters; hotshots; wildfire; wildfires

1 posted on 08/19/2009 5:21:15 PM PDT by george76
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To: ASOC; jazusamo; proud_yank; girlangler; redpoll; Eska; Eye of Unk; thackney; Species8472; ...

The kids literally put their lives on the line for the public and to come home to this situation is pretty disheartening


2 posted on 08/19/2009 5:24:39 PM PDT by george76 (Ward Churchill : Fake Indian, Fake Scholarship, and Fake Art)
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To: george76

Too bad their hideouts wouldn’t catch fire and the firefighters just can’t get to them.


3 posted on 08/19/2009 5:25:20 PM PDT by mrsmel (Put the Gitmo terrorists near Capitol Hill.)
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To: george76

In Alaska no less. However I have read about gang problems in Fairbanks in recent years.


4 posted on 08/19/2009 5:26:05 PM PDT by cripplecreek (Seniors, the new shovel ready project under socialized medicine.)
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To: mrsmel

The thieves left their DNA


5 posted on 08/19/2009 5:26:25 PM PDT by george76 (Ward Churchill : Fake Indian, Fake Scholarship, and Fake Art)
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To: cripplecreek

Could be eco’s ?


6 posted on 08/19/2009 5:27:34 PM PDT by george76 (Ward Churchill : Fake Indian, Fake Scholarship, and Fake Art)
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To: george76

They peed on the clothes... DNA evidence now, should they be caught?


7 posted on 08/19/2009 5:27:43 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (59 million Americans joined hands and shouted, "Yes, We Can March off This Cliff!")
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To: cripplecreek

They never did find the bastards that burned down Sarah’s church Wasilla Bible Church, I wonder if somehow there is a connection


8 posted on 08/19/2009 5:27:49 PM PDT by Sarah Barracuda
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To: george76

Or Indians/Eskimos with way too much time on their hands?


9 posted on 08/19/2009 5:28:28 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (59 million Americans joined hands and shouted, "Yes, We Can March off This Cliff!")
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To: HiTech RedNeck

They stole a list of vehicles.

The FBI and state cops should be watching.

Not that many roads to escape on...unless they drive them into the bush.


10 posted on 08/19/2009 5:31:15 PM PDT by george76 (Ward Churchill : Fake Indian, Fake Scholarship, and Fake Art)
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To: george76

The minute any identifiable fire equipment is being up for sale ... or being used while a FF or someone who knows it’s fire equipment ... it’ll be like a stolen painting - put away and only looked at by the thief ....


11 posted on 08/19/2009 5:31:17 PM PDT by SkyDancer ('Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow for those who do not..' ~ Thomas Jefferson)
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To: george76

Well that’s good now we’ll see if anything gets done about it.


12 posted on 08/19/2009 5:34:34 PM PDT by mrsmel (Put the Gitmo terrorists near Capitol Hill.)
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To: Sarah Barracuda
The folks who started the church fire were undoubtedly "journalists" left behind by the MSM.

Limbaugh says 300 of that type of person were taken to the Palmer/Wasilla area to dig up dirt. Others say more, others less, but that's definitely too many MSM people to be working there.

Maybe they're getting desperate ~ start fire, watch fire, write story, send in, get paid, steal stuff from firefighters.

It's all a pattern. Time for ATF to go after these guys.

13 posted on 08/19/2009 5:36:28 PM PDT by muawiyah
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To: george76

Very sad but I’d hate to be one of them when a judge sentences them. I doubt there’s much chance of them getting away with it, they left evidence and took identifiable stuff.


14 posted on 08/19/2009 5:37:22 PM PDT by jazusamo (But there really is no free lunch, except in the world of political rhetoric,.: Thomas Sowell)
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To: HiTech RedNeck
Not many Indians around Palmer. The ones that do live 25 miles further east, pretty good bunch; never do that kinda junk. Indians around Palmer jouned white society 75 years back. I had native neighbors when we lived in Sutton, they were realators, med emergency personel, and had their own businesses. Not like a village anymore in Mat-Su. Palmer has always drawn the criminals out from Anchorage. Once back in 70's, old Bob Boyd (now deceased) was town cop. 8-9 young hoodlums tried a mid day hold up of drug store. Boyd was walking down street, caught them in store, had shoot out. Killed several of them, wounded some others as they raan for their lives. Boyd showed me the scars where he was shot up in that incident; kinda cool guy that grew taters in Palmer.

Still Palmer has no wheres near the crime most small towns in lower 48.

15 posted on 08/19/2009 6:05:57 PM PDT by Eska
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To: Sarah Barracuda
They never did find the bastards that burned down Sarah’s church Wasilla Bible Church

Did they even try?

16 posted on 08/19/2009 6:06:26 PM PDT by sionnsar (IranAzadi|5yst3m 0wn3d-it's N0t Y0ur5:SONY|Remember Neda Agha-Soltan|TV--it's NOT news you can trust)
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To: george76

The thieves left their DNA
The thieves left their DNA

That pee in the clothes....has a name and address attached. Don’t wash the stuff....save it for the prosecutor.


17 posted on 08/19/2009 6:06:48 PM PDT by pointsal
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To: Eska

No broad brush condemnation of the early natives meant. (Are you an Inuit?) Just that I hear the government dependency situation that many reservation natives have gotten into has spelled trouble for both them and their neighbors. Alcoholism is sky high.


18 posted on 08/19/2009 6:14:59 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (59 million Americans joined hands and shouted, "Yes, We Can March off This Cliff!")
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To: george76

UPDATE

Two of the asshats ae in custody - caught in Kenai driving the stolen cars - pair of brothers. Troopers are “interviewing” now. I suspect a lot more arrests by tomorrow.

MO sez meth heads or crackheads.


19 posted on 08/19/2009 7:48:20 PM PDT by ASOC (Cave quid dicis, quando, et cui)
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To: ASOC; george76

Excellent!

Good news and thanks for posting, I’d bet they’ll get all the names from these two turkeys.


20 posted on 08/19/2009 8:17:49 PM PDT by jazusamo (But there really is no free lunch, except in the world of political rhetoric,.: Thomas Sowell)
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To: ASOC

Thanks for the update.


21 posted on 08/19/2009 8:59:42 PM PDT by george76 (Ward Churchill : Fake Indian, Fake Scholarship, and Fake Art)
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To: jazusamo

A routine traffic stop may have provided the first break in the theft and vandalism of a group of elite firefighters.

Kenai police on Sunday stopped a Ford F-150 for speeding. The driver, 24-year-old David Fetters of Anchorage, was immediately arrested for driving with a suspended license.

Fetters and Williams have both been charged with first-degree vehicle theft. The investigation continues, and

http://www.ktuu.com/Global/story.asp?S=10960144


22 posted on 08/19/2009 9:10:08 PM PDT by george76 (Ward Churchill : Fake Indian, Fake Scholarship, and Fake Art)
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To: HiTech RedNeck
I'm just a white guy who has lived around them (athabaskan) and (wifey&I) have taught in a few villages. Guess I figure I had the wrong outlook about Indians until I was only White boy in Nativeland for a year. Not only did that reverse racism do me good; but I realized I didn't know much about Indians or their situation as a people going extinct/being displaced.

The booze does ruin the villages with massive abuse, suicide, violence, ect; but it's more a function of them having lost everything they started with ovre the last 100 years; and not seeing anything getting any better in the future.

I had a friend who was local chief. He had lost 5 of his own kids to alcohol (they died in various alcohol related accidents). This chief had once been the worst alcoholic in village, then quit; been sober for 20 some years. He tried closing the local (white owned) liguor store down. He went to state in Juneau begging them to stop the deaths. This was right after a local Indian froze to death in snowbank at minus 47 walking 18 miles home from liquor store. The state liquor board refused to even think about it. You see, with Indians; the access to alcohol is like modern day genocide. The govt gives them maybe 300-400 a month, every penny is pretty much spent on booze; and it's killing them all off one at a time. Between the hard livin lifestyle and accidents; they are dying out as a people. That in itself will solve the govts Indian problem. If USA, ever had to adhere to treaties, ect; they'd go under for sure. Like I said, modern day genocide.

23 posted on 08/20/2009 4:22:47 AM PDT by Eska
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To: Eska

Genetics also makes American Indian peoples more susceptible to the fire water. They knew nothing about distilling for millennia — until the Europeans came.

If they had their druthers, would they wish to resume a nomadic life, wandering wherever the living was better and living directly off the land? With the occasional warring clash where two tribes wanted to squat on the same spot? (Some could be pretty mean to each other.)


24 posted on 08/20/2009 6:11:30 AM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (59 million Americans joined hands and shouted, "Yes, We Can March off This Cliff!")
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To: HiTech RedNeck
The Indians who have lived around Whites since say 1900 & our world mix their moral/social world view with modern economic suburbia. They want to build casinos, sell land for development, and their kids grow up as a minority in what mostly is a white school system; they fit in and achieve the American dream.

In rural Alaska, the village Indians try to preserve their culture, language, lifestyle,ect in villages. Trouble is our society surrounds theirs and negatively impacts their viilages; mostly with bootleggers, lodges, bars, package stores;;; all white owned. I once heard a 15 year old kid I had in school say: We don't blame white man for our alcohol problems, but your world is killing ours. No easy answers. Most village Indians want to live like they use to, they hunt & fish all year long, never obey seasons or limits, but don't see many positive changes coming down the road. They drink to cover up all the pain over how they see their land & nation was stolen off them. You see, they never saw any Russians, who sold ak to USA.

You see a big difference across the border in Canada. The Can govt invested in villages 30 years back and had forced the Indians to get with the program. Created jobs, helped them buy houses around where Whites live, helped them adjust into the modern world, fostered good citizenship as our culture, the dominent one is. Things are alot better for Indians I know upriver in Canada. USA just throws small amounts of money at them so they drink themselves to death, genocide. Much of the money in grants is siponed off by crooked whites hired to get grants for villages, no joke. All kinds of corruption. Usa need to follow Canada's approach with reference to the Indians.

In 1900, there were 400 Indians in our village. Now there are 28.

Alot of the Indians are half breeds, and you can really see it when they drink with their full breed brothers. Genetics does play a role in how a person can handle booze.

If you ever spent a year liiving with Indians in their world, you'd see all the good & sharing & family that goes on in villages. Otherwise, most us Whites just see the drunk Indians stumbling around in cities, homeless, and with all kinds of problems. Actually, out where we live, along the Yukon River; I'd rather spend timne with the Indians that anybody else. They don't judge everybody, not so enthrocentric as we always are. Pretty good bunch actually that have got a raw deal.

Also, I saw in paper they caught 2 guys down on Kenai with stolen truck from fire fighters. Guys were from Anchorage, more to come I'm sure.

25 posted on 08/20/2009 10:38:23 AM PDT by Eska
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To: jazusamo

LOL

when the Alaska State Troopers ask, folks talk......


26 posted on 08/20/2009 10:05:21 PM PDT by ASOC (Cave quid dicis, quando, et cui)
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