Yosemite fire possibly ignited in illegal marijuana grow, official says

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7greeneyes

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url: hMPp://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57601266/yosemite-fire-possibly-ignited-in-illegal-marijuana-grow-official-says/

Yosemite fire possibly ignited in illegal marijuana grow, official says


YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, CALIF. As crews pushed forward with building containment lines around the wildfire in and around Yosemite National Park, one local fire chief speculated the blaze might have ignited in an illegal marijuana grow.

Chief Todd McNeal of the Twain Harte Fire Department told a community group recently that there was no lightning in the area, so the fire must have been caused by humans.

"We don't know the exact cause," he said in a talk that was posted Aug. 23 on YouTube. "Highly suspect it might have been some sort of illicit grove, a marijuana-grow-type thing, but it doesn't really matter at this point."

The video was first reported Saturday by the San Jose Mercury News. McNeal makes the comments just after the 6-minute mark in the video below:

Meanwhile, authorities lifted evacuation orders and advisories for several Sierra Nevada communities once threatened by the massive blaze.

Officials said they still are investigating the cause of the fire, which started 18 days ago in an isolated area of the Stanislaus National Forest and has burned nearly 370 square miles — the fourth biggest recorded wildfire in California.

With higher humidity and lower temperatures, the fire reached 80 percent containment, prompting the sheriff's offices in Tuolumne and Mariposa counties to lift evacuation advisories for communities with several thousand structures in the fire's path.

Officials overseeing the fire suppression effort would not comment on McNeal's statement about the blaze possibly being ignited in an illegal marijuana grow. They would only say that the cause is still under investigation.

"There has been some progress but there are no additional details at this time," said Rena Escobedo, a spokeswoman with the Rim Fire incident command team. The U.S. Forest Service is leading the investigation.

McNeal could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Whether a marijuana grow or something else was the cause of the fire will take a long time to determine, said Doug Allen, a retired division chief in charge of law enforcement for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection in Southern California.

Allen said investigators generally follow char marks on trees and rocks to help find the fire's point of origin, then mark off the territory into grids that are searched for clues. A lightning strike, for example, might have melted sand into glass.

"Everything will have carbon stains that will tell them which direction it came from," Allen said. "You won't find the point of origin on every fire. Maybe a bulldozer has driven over where it started and you're out of luck."

Illegal marijuana grows in national parks and forests have tormented federal land managers for years. Growers hike into remote canyons with poisons and irrigation lines and set up camp for months. The poisons kill wildlife and seep into streams and creeks. The growers leave tons of garbage behind.

The three top causes of wildfire in California are equipment use, such as a lawnmower blade hitting a rock or a vehicle's malfunctioning catalytic converter, plus debris burning and arson.
 
Shortly after the Rim fire blew up from a 200-acre blaze into a hell with serious anger management issues, rumors about its origin began circulating.One suggested that a deer hunter — the archery season began the same day as the fire — might have left a campfire unattended, and it took off in the ridiculously dry conditions.
The more popular theory, as espoused by the Twain Harte fire chief at a community meeting, was that a drug cartel operating in the remote Clavey River canyon started the fire that burned 237,341 acres as of Wednesday afternoon. Containment is at 80 percent. By the time it's done, the Rim fire could be California's third-largest wildfire on record.
A video of Twain Harte's community meeting ended up on YouTube, as does just about everything these days. Bay Area newspapers, the Los Angeles Times and TV stations picked up on it, and suddenly the rumor spread like, well, you know.
Never mind that the fire official who made this revelation, Todd McNeal, hadn't attended the twice-daily briefings conducted by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the U.S. Forest Service and the Tuolumne County Sheriff's Department, sheriff's deputy Scott Johnson said.

"I've been at every one of them, and I have not seen him," Johnson said.
And even if McNeal had been there, Johnson said, "the cause of origin hasn't been discussed at any of them."
Turns out the chief was wrong. The San Jose Mercury News reported Wednesday that U.S Forest Service officials have ruled out a pot grow as the cause of the fire.
McNeal certainly wasn't alone in suspecting a drug cartel was responsible. Posts on Facebook and other social media suggested such from the get-go.
And I received a call from a friend in the Groveland area a few days after the Rim fire began and before Twain Harte's community meeting. The friend told me a more detailed story, which he'd heard firsthand from people supposedly well-connected with the firefighting community. In their version, the pot farmers torched their crop purposely because they thought law enforcement was about to crack down on them.
Yet another spin suggested someone has been arrested in connection with the blaze. Not true, said Johnson. Presumably, the suspect would be locked up in the Tuolumne County Jail, which has no such guests at the inn, he said.
I chatted with folks familiar with the burn area, including fire officials, cattle ranchers who lost animals in the fire, and a wildlife biologist who has been monitoring deer in the area.
They've all stumbled upon pot plantations in the forest at one time or another. They've found drip-irrigation systems. There is video evidence, too.
"We had trail cameras up last spring to catch mountain lion movement and caught two growers coming down the trail with pruning shears," Nathan Graveline, the California Department of Fish & Wildlife biologist.
We can presume these fellows weren't simply trimming underbrush to reduce fuel and lessen the fire danger.
"We also see a lot of interesting traffic, new car tracks coming in during the night, gangbangers out in the middle of winter and probably miles of black drip line," Graveline added. "We report all the stuff we see to law enforcement. From what I've heard through wardens, the cartel in control of this area has not been violent. Up to last year, they were not finding guns or booby traps in the grows. This year, things have changed a bit and they've found AK-47s (assault rifles) and other weapons."
Johnson confirmed that drug enforcement officials recently did recover an AK-47, though not in the same part of the Stanislaus forest where the Rim fire began.
Pot-growing in the Sierra and foothills has been going on for decades, often by cartels who leave undocumented workers there to guard the farms. They use remote, rugged areas where campers and hikers aren't likely to venture.
Authorities in Tuolumne County will seize over 200,000 marijuana plants over the course of a year, Johnson said.
"Traditionally, we're one of the top five in the state," he said. "It's fallen a little because there are more indoor grows. But it's not unusual at all to seize 15,000 to 20,000 plants in a day."
The sheriff's narcotics investigators work with other drug agents and forest personnel involved in the Campaign Against Marijuana Project, which has the handy acronym of C.A.M.P.
They use aircraft and rely on information from rangers, game wardens, loggers and other boots-on-the-ground folks in the hills.
Even so, no one actually involved in the Rim fire investigation ever said, publicly, that pot growers caused the fire. To the contrary, they've now denied it point-blank, telling the newspaper that the landscape where the fire began wasn't suited for dope-iculture.
As so often happens, when facts are unavailable, conjecture will do.
Perhaps some folks heard radio chatter from a veteran pilot involved in the air assault against the inferno.
"This thing is burning trees like grass!" the pilot said.
Wait — did he say "grass?" Isn't grass another name for marijuana?
Not this time.
 
Came out today.

TUOLUMNE COUNTY — A deer hunter — not pot growers — started the Rim fire that has obliterated 237,341 acres of land in the Stanislaus National Forest and Yosemite National Park, according to the U.S. Forest Service’s law enforcement and investigations division.
The 383-square-mile fire, now at 80 percent containment and with a running tab of $81 million, began in remote, steep terrain in the Jawbone Ridge area east of Groveland on the afternoon of Aug. 17, and quickly spread out of control.
Aug. 17 was the opening day of the archery deer season in the region.
Ray Mooney, a Forest Service public information officer based out of Vallejo, said the investigation is ongoing and than while a suspect has been determined, there have been no arrests made thus far. The hunter’s name was not released as the investigation continues. The Tuolumne County District Attorney’s office, also involved in the investigation, declined to comment.
The Forest Service statement further dispells the widespread rumor that the catastrophic blaze was caused by pot growers. Officials said there is no indication the hunter was involved with illegal marijuana operations on public lands, nor were there any marijuana sites located near the origin of the fire.
The fire at one point seriously threatened the communities of Groveland, Pine Mountain Lake, Big Oak Flat to the west, and Tuolumne City and communities along the Highway 108 corridor. Nearly 2,500 structures remain in jeopardy. The blaze has destroyed 111 structures, including 11 homes, along with summer camps.
Some 3,975 firefighters continue to work on the fire, which is likely larger than the listed acreage because mechanical problems prohibited infrared equipment from updating the size of the fire area.
 
funny how fertilizers used to grow pot is POSION but the chem lawn guy rolling trough the n-hoods overspraying all that **** and it gets into the storm water and the excess runoff right into the rivers n lakes .....



but in the woods its poison LOL

everytime.

biggest damage they do is leaving garbage, all the tree cutting and brush clearing etc is so minimal in the big picture.


funny how bow season started same day... id bet a hunter flicked a butt.
 
A Bow hunter??? What was he using,...flaming arrows???
 
Always blame the Pot Head 1st,,,never the Red Neck with a Bow and a match.:D
 

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