KANSAN.COM / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / THURSDAY, AUGUST 26, 2010 / NEWS
3A
CRIME
Homeless man charged with setting Oregon wildfire
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ASHLAND, ORE. — Families looked for valuables, pets and mementos Wednesday in the ashes of 11 homes destroyed by a fast-moving wildfire while a homeless man accused of starting the blazesat in jail.
"Homeless living in the interface
John Thiry, 40, was arrested at 3 a.m. under a freeway ramp and charged with 11 counts of reckless endangerment and 11 counts of reckless burning, authorities said.
in Ashland is a real problem and a huge concern," said Gary Jones as he helped his daughter, Lisa Jones, look through the blackened water-logged rubble that used to be her home. "Who wants to be homeless? But by the same token, you can't have camping in the middle of summer out there and lighting the place on fire."
Ashland police Detective Sgt. Jim Alderman said other people at a homeless camp along Interstate 5 just outside the city limits saw Thiry running from the initial fire Tuesday afternoon.
The fire immediately burned an abandoned barn where homeless people sleep, and the embers blew across the freeway, touching off the blaze that raced through a subdivision, Alderman said.
The fire on the outskirts of
Ashland, a town of about 21,000 people best known as home to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, ignited the 11 homes on one side of
the same street one after the other, setting off explosions Tuesday afternoon.
backyards."
"It was just inferno — black smoke, RV, things blowing up. gas tanks, tires," neighborhood resident Cindy
Lisa lones said she had just gone outside to get a tomato from the garden when she saw a house
"It sounded like bombs going off. Like tornadoes of black smoke coming out of garages and backyards."
Walker said. "Propane tanks, I don't know. It sounded like bombs going off. Like tornadoes of black smoke coming out of garages and
CINDY WALKER Resident
down the street was on fire. Her husband, teacher Nanosh Lucas, was on the couch recuperating from minor surgery. They managed to grab her computer and set a propane tank out in the street so it wouldn't explode before a police officer
told them it was time to go. They drove away in her car, leaving his in the driveway, where it burned.
When they returned, their cat.
Lucy, was nowhere to be found. The house was flattened.
"We just drove away," she said.
"It was really cool," Lisa Jones said. "It had a nice open floor plan. About a year ago we finished painting it. We took down the wallpaper. We put down new floors. We had all our artwork from traveling.
While Lisa Jones and her best friend, Lauren Jones, took photos of the rubble, Gary Jones exclaimed that he had found two carbonized tomatoes in what was left of the garden.
Three other houses were damaged and homes along four streets in the 1970s-era neighborhood were evacuated. The flames were finally controlled around dusk and no injuries were reported. Officials were tallying the damage Wednesday and looking for the
cause of the blaze, which burned less than 20 acres.
In southern Idaho, firefighters hoped calmer, cooler weather would help them gain ground on a wildfire that scorched more than 510 square miles.
The lightning-sparked fire was fueled by strong winds Sunday and Monday, blackening more than 327,000 acres and becoming the nation's most actively battled wildfire since it started Saturday. So far, crews have contained 40 percent of the fire burning across a desolate, flat landscape of sagebrush and cheatgrass. Full containment was forecast for Friday.
Firefighters planned an aerial attack on a 1,300-acre wildfire that forced the evacuation of 200 homes in Kern County, about 60 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
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