Oregon Fires: Heat, dryness, lightning, wind fuel wildfire flames

PAISLEY -- Oregon National Guard troops plan to join the battle today as 16 forest fires continue to rage unchecked in Central and Southern Oregon, burning 219,781 acres during the weekend and threatening hundreds of isolated homes and ranches despite the efforts of nearly 8,000 firefighters.

Gov. John Kitzhaber is expected to visit the Paisley area in south-central Oregon this afternoon, where the Winter and Tool Box fires merged during the weekend into a "megafire" covering more than 87,000 acres, the state's largest. He will also visit the Squire Peak fire camp south of Medford this morning.

Those fires, feeding on dead and dry ponderosa pines, have jumped, twisted and spread in a manner that officials described as "incredible." At one point last week, the Winter blaze created a "tornado" of fire, lifting whole trees and utility poles as it grew in two directions along Summer Lake, spreading 10 miles to the north and two miles to the south.

Firefighters have managed to save houses but have had to let the fire take its own path at times, said Jim Mair, incident commander of the Winter fire.

"One of our people said this fire is like a dragon -- every time it turns his head there's fire, so we don't want to disturb the dragon," Mair said.

A contingent of 250 National Guard troops is expected today to help with firefighting duties. The troops, 150 from the 82nd Battalion based in Bend and 100 from the 316th Battalion based in La Grande, will focus efforts on the southern end of the Winter fire, where most of their time will be spent mopping up after the blaze.

As of Sunday, the troops had spent five days in Bend at a basic fire-fighting camp learning skills. The soldiers must be supervised by fire crew bosses to ensure their safety in the charred forests.

"The problem now is finding enough fire crew bosses to get them out on the line," said Chris Friend, a spokesman for the Oregon Department of Forestry. "We've been shaking the trees to make sure we get enough."

One Summer Lake resident, Judy Blais Napier, was critical of the way state and federal officials handled the fire. Napier, who had to evacuate her 13 Tennessee walker horses from her 400-acre ranch and who nearly lost her home, said response was delayed and officials wasted time deciding jurisdiction.

Officials disagreed, pointing out that their crews helped save Napier's home. They also said the number of blazes in the region was a factor in how the fire was fought.

"We were so stretched out, where do you go first?" Mair asked. "It's still that way with resources; we still don't have enough resources."

The combined Winter and Tool Box fires continue to threaten about 60 homes as well as Bonneville Power Administration power lines, said David Widmark, spokesman for the Northwest Interagency Coordinating Center in Portland.

"It's moving in several different directions," Widmark said. "The winds in that area, because of the geography, change very quickly. That's one of the reasons we've had a hard time getting a handle on those fires."

Flames raced over a major communications site atop a mountain, but the facility remained in operation, he said. The facility includes Oregon State Police, Forest Service, Lake County and Bureau of Land Management radio and cell phone relays.

The Winter fire was said to be 40 percent contained Sunday, but officials said heat and lightning continue to threaten the region.

Danny Mercer, a fire weather forecaster for the National Weather Service in Portland, said a new round of thunderstorms late Sunday could rumble up from the south into the south-central part of the state.

"It could get real nasty at first, with lightning and high winds," Mercer said. "But the model forecasts are showing that these storms may bring with them a lot of rain."

Mercer said the threat of thunderstorms along the spine of the Cascades will continue into Wednesday and possibly Thursday.

Although 16 of the Northwest's 17 largest fires are in Oregon, regional officials have made the lone Washington state fire their top priority, diverting air tanker flights to dump fire retardant and preparing to reassign crews if necessary.

The Deer Point fire near Lake Chelan, north of Wenatchee in eastern Washington, became the region's top priority because it threatens 250 homes, said Widmark, the fire coordination center spokesman.

Many of the threatened residences are upscale vacation homes, he said. One home was destroyed Sunday.

The coordinating center opens when large forest fires break out in the region. Operated by nine state and federal agencies, the center decides which fires in Oregon and Washington get top priority and assigns resources accordingly.

Firefighting priorities are decided based on a fire's potential to hurt people, destroy communities and harm commercial, historical and cultural resources, Widmark said.

The Deer Point blaze was started by a campfire, and the Tool Box and the Winter fires, which occurred in what signposts call "Oregon Outback" country, were caused by lightning strikes.

Lightning ignited drought-stressed sage and juniper, which flashed into the heavier stands of ponderosa pine.

In some cases, the fires have provided some benefit by thinning smaller trees and killing brush, said John Zapell, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman.

In other spots, however, including several key drainages, the fire burned hot and fast, torching trees into their crowns and taking even the largest ponderosa pines.

The Defense's Case

Unlike the prosecution, which downplays the yearlong dispute between the defendants and the Oregon Department of Human Services, defense attorney Edgar Steele insists that the actions of the State of Oregon triggered the events of August 1, 2001.

Steele, in fact, hoped to be allowed to argue a "choice of evils" defense in this trial — a plan that was ultimately thwarted when Judge William Lasswell ruled against him.

Nevertheless, the defense hopes to convince the jurors that Brian and Ruth Christine were forced to act only after they struggled for a year with a governmental system prejudiced against them.

That is, of course, if the Christines were actually involved in the carjacking at all — a concession that the defense is not willing to make.

Despite all the facts that appear to support the state's charge that Brian and Ruth planned and carried out the events of August 1, Steele insisted that it is up to the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the Christines were indeed the people who took back their children from the state's custody. Not surprisingly, Steele argues that there is insufficient evidence for jurors to so find.

Most of the defense case, in fact, is built around evidence purporting to show that Brian and Ruth Christine are gentle people, good Christians and loving parents who would do anything to protect their children.

The defense challenges the SCF allegations that Bethany, Lydia, and Miriam were abused or malnourished at the time they were taken into protective custody. Photographs taken at the time show three young children who appear to be quite thin, but the defense argues that the children merely reflect the genetic makeup of their parents, who are both tall and slender.

And the Christines, both vegetarians who are raising their children to be vegetarians, deny that they ever withheld food from the girls — although they do admit that the family sometimes fasted as a religious practice.

Besides arguing the facts, the defense in this case disputes the law. Attorney Steele insists that the two top counts, robbery and kidnapping, have been overcharged, and are wholly inappropriate to the circumstances at hand. Brian and Ruth, for example, stand accused of stealing the state's van as well as personal belongings of Terrance Nelson and Jennifer Barrett — but the van and belongings were found only a few miles away from where they were taken, untouched and undamaged, with their value intact.

The defense refutes the kidnapping charges as well, arguing that neither Nelson nor Barrett were actually taken hostage against their wills, but merely directed to move a few feet up and out of the van. This action, according to attorney Steele, comes anywhere close to the definition of "kidnapping" as it is normally understood.

Steele also contends that the state cannot prove that the Christines intended to do anything on August 1, 2001 other than to rescue their wrongly-taken children and reunite their family.

The couple has many supporters who protested outside the Roseburg, Ore., courthouse and regularly appeared in the courtroom as observers, representing a wide spectrum of viewpoints and political positions.

Some were supporting Brian and Ruth's actions out of a specific frustration with the actions of Oregon's Services to Children and Families, a system they feel is corrupt. Others, leaning toward the camp of the political right, apparently have wider-ranging anti-government views, seeing the Christines as victims of overzealous and over-reaching government authorities. And some believe the Christines are religious martyrs, struggling against an aggressively secular system of government that has forsaken Christianity.

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