Posted on 08/15/2026 6:20:13 AM PDT by Twotone
WASHINGTON COUNTY, Idaho — What started with a lightning strike ended with the Tartar Fire burning more than 158,000 acres across Washington County.
But some ranchers say the wildfire wasn't the only source of their losses.
Kirk Chandler, who has lived on his family's ranch his entire life, says ranchers spent days working to protect their property as the Tartar Fire moved through the area.
"If you're the third one to call or the second one to call for help, they're not available, and so you just have to take care of yourself," Chandler said.
That meant protecting cattle, sheep and the remaining feed on the ranch.
Chandler says his family and neighbors spent the weekend cutting fire lines and shoveling dirt.
"Because we worked night and day and all day the next day and into the night the next night," he said.
Then, in the early morning hours of Monday, Chandler says he received a call from a neighbor who said firefighters were setting fires near his home.
"The neighbor up where we leased ground from him to graze called and said that they were in there around his house setting fire to his place," Chandler said.
Chandler says he rushed to the property and found U.S. Wildland Fire Service crews conducting a burn operation.
"They were lighting a fire, and the closest fire was probably four miles to the north," he said. "So, thousands and thousands of acres between where they were lighting the fire and where the fire was burning."
Washington County Sheriff Matt Thomas was also at the scene.
Chandler says Thomas ordered the crews to stop lighting the fires and eventually threatened to arrest them if they continued.
Thomas confirmed to KTVB that he was at the location and that fire crews were on private property.
Thomas also said he told those crews in the moment that the actions could be considered third-degree arson under Idaho law.
Chandler says the crews stopped and left the area, but the fire they had already started continued to burn.
"One guy was lighting it. We went out and stopped him, and he just walked off and left the fire he just lit burn," Chandler said.
Chandler calls what happened intentional and says he wants someone held accountable.
"The people you feel are there to help you will not help you. So, and then the next morning to go up there and see all of them up there, those same crews lighting fires and burning up what you had saved the day before is arson. It's just flat arson," Chandler said.
Another rancher, Tristan Winegar, says the Tartar Fire destroyed fences, water sources and livestock.
"We lost all of our fences, we lost stock water, we lost cattle, we lost quite a few cattle," Winegar said.
The loss of grass is creating another problem.
Winegar says calves are being weaned about two months earlier than normal because there is no longer enough grass for them to eat.
"We're at least two months early weaning because there's nothing for them to eat out there," he said.
Winegar says ranchers spent days trying to protect the grass that remained, only to see some of it burned by additional fire operations.
"And when those fires are relit. That is, it is heart-wrenching because all that grass that we worked so hard to save goes up in flames, and I mean, it's difficult to watch," Winegar said.
"We need firefighters, but we need them to come and help us fight fire. That's the most important thing," he said.
Frank Carroll says using fire to fight fire is not a new tactic.
Carroll spent decades with the U.S. Forest Service, including 11 years fighting wildfires in the Boise National Forest. He also served as a hotshot squad boss and is now vice president of the National Wildfire Alliance.
Carroll says backburning has traditionally been used as an emergency tactic to remove fuel ahead of an advancing wildfire.
"The second use was backfiring, and that was essentially an emergency operation where it's a Hail Mary deal where the fire is coming at you and you light up the area in front of you to try to create a big enough fire to suck into the fire that's coming at you," Carroll said.
But Carroll says today's operations can happen on a much larger scale.
"We also call that big boxing and burning. So, they draw a big box around the fire, and then they burn it," he said.
Carroll says those operations can conflict with what ranchers are trying to protect.
"Come in and they start lighting these massive firing operations to meet their own objectives. And many times, that conflicts directly with what the ranchers are trying to do, which is protect their feed," Carroll said.
Carroll says there also needs to be clearer accountability when large-scale burning operations are conducted.
"What they should be doing is they should be reporting on the ICS-209 every day. You know, here's how big the fire was, here's how, you know, here's how many miles of indirect fire line we built, here's how many acres we burned intentionally, and here's how many acres the fire burned," he said.
Sheriff Thomas also criticized what he sees as an overreliance on putting fire on the ground during wildfire suppression.
"To purposely set fire to private property shouldn’t be the first choice when it comes to fighting a fire. I know the need for putting fire on the ground to prevent spread but for that to be your lone firefighting tool, that’s a problem," he said in a statement to KTVB.
For Winegar, the dispute is not about whether firefighters should be there. It's about working together to prevent the immense loss.
"It is not them versus the fire, and it's not us versus the fire, it's all of us," he said.
For Chandler, the issue now is accountability.
"We would like to have somebody accountable. I mean, if you go in and arson somebody's property, they should be investigated and held accountable," Chandler said.
KTVB reached out to the Tartar Fire incident command team for a response.
The team said it has been working closely with local landowners and ranchers during suppression efforts. Through liaison officers and division supervisors, the team said it has established direct communication to coordinate operations and share information.
The team said everyone involved shares the same goal: suppressing the fire as safely and quickly as possible.
KTVB also reached out to the U.S. Wildland Fire Service for its response to what happened in Washington County.
We have not received a response.
Hope he took video of the fires being lit.
Consider this chapter from my first book written 25 years ago, has a section, "From Ranch to Ranchettes."
The people working in govt jobs no longer see themselves as servants, but instead holding power over others. Kind of like one would have in a communist country.
I have witnessed this twice from BLM firefighters. They only get paid well when they are fighting active fires so they create fires for more pay. And they start them on private property so that they can blame the property owner and bill them for it spreading off onto public lands.
[Ralph Wiggum voice] “I’m helping!”
It's an awesome plant for the purpose. The roots are so tough Indians used them as basket cordage. Hence, it burns slowly and completely so as to be easily controlled, holds soil on near vertical slopes, and pops up green again after a fire with no summer water.
Are they really fire fighters...
I saw some fire video from Utah. The fire was crossing grassland and not forest or scrub. No dozers, no disc harrows, no operations of any kind while the fire was headed towards more forested and mountainous areas.
I watched these loggers from B.C. talking about how wildland firefighting has become a joke in the past twenty years and how fires that would have been easily controlled then are now allowed to get out of hand.
Many summers ago I was in Alaska on a Federal forest fire fighting crew. It was half white boys and half Eskimos and Indians. The rumor was that the native Indians often set these fires. They could earn enough Federal cash fighting them to last all year.
Rumor was that setting them was as simple as dropping a flaming plastic gallon milk jug of gasoline out of small bush airplane. The Eskimo Molotov cocktail.
I just saw your first one, and it controlled itself!
What the heck? It was green, too.
Amazing stuff isn’t it? It takes several years to grow a patch like that and it takes continued vigilance to keep hardwoods and weeds from invading it, but it’s a relatively easy and trouble free cover. I’m working with interplanting yarrow and Iris to improve its architectural appeal.
today’s wildlands firefighters only watch as the fires burn.
The firefighters have bought into the false theory that wildfires are good for the environment.
The science behind this method relies on the fire triangle (heat, oxygen, and fuel); by removing the fuel, the wildfire is effectively starved and loses its ability to spread across that area, often creating a "black line" where the fire extinguishes itself. This technique is highly effective for containment but requires precise timing and expert knowledge to ensure the controlled fire does not escape and exacerbate the situation.
Let's hope that is what is being employed, and that it is being employed correctly.
I think the term is breakfire. A small fire in the path of the bigger fire to consume the fuel.
If a rancher objects to that, he can go to ‘Ell.
Not firefighters. Bradbury-esque “Firemen.”
They basically torched the historic North Rim visitor lodge at Grand Canyon. Just stupid.
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