Car Blast Injures Two Earth First! Activists

An explosion of uncertain origin tore through a car as it drove down an Oakland street Thursday, injuring two members of the radical environmental group Earth First!

The two injured people, Judi Bari, 40, of Mendocino and Darryl Cherney, 33, of Piercy, had complained to police before the blast of death threats and general harassment in apparent retaliation for their efforts to stop the logging of old-growth redwoods.

Both were taken after the blast to Highland Hospital in Oakland where Bari, the mother of two, was reported to be in serious condition with facial injuries and a broken pelvis. Cherney, believed to be her passenger, suffered facial cuts and a possible broken arm.

Oakland police declined to speculate on the cause of the blast, which tore through Bari’s 1981 white Subaru station wagon as it drove past Oakland High School’s athletic field. Students filled the field when the late-morning blast occurred, but no bystanders were injured in the explosion or by the car as it crashed into several parked cars before stopping.

Explosives experts from the FBI and federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms have joined the investigation to try to determine if the blast was the result of a catastrophic mechanical failure or a bomb.

Ken Rich, 40, of Castro Valley said he saw the explosion and ran up to help Cherney out of the car. He said Cherney was “bleeding pretty badly.”

“I’ve been in Vietnam and I’ve seen bombed-out cars before,” Rich told United Press International. “This one took a heavy hit. I’m amazed the people inside are still alive.”

Bari and Cherney have been active in Earth First! demonstrations that have used tree-sitting, road blockades and other forms of civil disobedience to try to stop the harvest of ancient redwoods in Mendocino and Humboldt counties.

Both in the past have told of receiving death threats--some made by phone, others by notes tacked to their homes--and of being subjected to personal and verbal harassment. Bari filed a police report last August saying a logging truck had tried to run her off the road.

They attributed the trouble to their efforts to save redwoods.

Both were in the process of organizing a controversial summerlong series of demonstrations they were billing as the “Redwood Summer,” in which activists from throughout the country were encouraged to come to Northern California and join in the anti-logging demonstrations.

Earth First! member Zack Stentz in Santa Cruz said that at the time of the blast, Bari and Cherney were on their way to UC Santa Cruz to recruit students for the summertime demonstrations.

That project has been criticized as overly provocative by the Sierra Club and other mainstream environmental groups. The trees they have proposed for preservation are all on private property.

Earlier in the year, Cherney had complained publicly that someone--at the time he accused unnamed loggers--of falsifying Earth First! news releases and secret strategy papers in an effort to discredit the group, which includes the exclamation point as part of its name.

Earth First! has issued a handbook of ecological sabotage--also known as “eco-tage” or “monkey-wrenching”--that advocates several controversial practices.

Times researcher Norma Kaufman contributed to this report.