REGIONAL REPORT : Cost of Fighting Fires in Wild Sparks Bills for Reimbursement : Several Western states collect from those responsible for a blaze. The question of negligence is a key consideration.

Bill Knaub was taking time out of a business trip to sample the trout fishing in Gates of the Mountains Wilderness Area in rugged central Montana when the fire started. His Coleman lantern tipped over and flames quickly consumed his tent, then charred 680 acres of timber and grassland.

Montana spent $43,000 extinguishing the April, 1988, blaze--and sent the bill to Knaub’s home in Aurora, Colo.

Montana’s efforts in exacting reimbursement for quelling Knaub’s fire are similar to those of federal and state forestry officials in several Northwest states and California.

Increasingly, in recent years, when individuals and companies negligently start a fire in the woods or grasslands in much of the West, they are billed--and face a lawsuit if they resist repaying the government for its fire suppression expenses.

‘But We Pay Taxes!’

“One common reaction we get is, ‘We pay taxes, why are you billing us for this fire?’ ” says Dave LeMay, chief of law enforcement for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention. “Our stance is that the state has a responsibility to provide a base level of protection, and that’s what taxes do. They provide the fire engines and (other) resources. . . .

“But the issue is, do the taxpayers have the responsibility for other people’s negligence. They don’t.”

In some states, the little-publicized cost recovery programs are raking in big money. In 1988 and 1989, California recovered $1.82 million. Washington collected $1.08 million last year, records show. Oregon in 1988 recovered $1.29 million.

Moreover, some authorities say the cost of reimbursing the government has strengthened an important fire prevention weapon, deterrence.

For instance, John Hennen, a Washington state assistant attorney general, says he is pursuing fewer cases against logging companies for a familiar cause of fires: taut, stressed cables rubbing along dry logs. “They’re becoming more careful,” Hennen says.

And those firefighting costs are considerable. The California forestry agency, which protects 33 million acres with more than 3,000 full-time employees, annually spends about $300 million a year in salary, equipment, fire-retardant materials, aircraft and other essentials of fire suppression. Washington state spent a record $19.5 million battling infernos across its 12.5 million acres in bone-dry 1988.

“Our incentive for collection is to reimburse the general fund,” LeMay says. “There’s no profit motive involved here at all.”

Big fires cost big money. The $292,000 Washington collected from a logging company earlier this year for an 839-acre blaze is not unusual for deep-woods blazes ignited by flying railroad sparks, logging operations or downed utility wires.

Most fire suppression bills, however, are smaller and go to individuals. They are farmers whose stubble-burning roars out of control, property owners caught flat-footed when their small debris fires leap their bounds, or campers like Knaub.

“It was an accident and my debt was paid,” Knaub said recently.

Indeed, the vast majority of the bills are paid with little hassle.

The few suppression bills that do prompt litigation sometimes douse fire management bureaucrats with unseemly allegations, ranging from bill padding to waste to negligence incausing or spreading fires. Consider:

--Washington state spent $2,690 to feed fire crews lobster tails the night after a 1988 fire was quelled, according to court records. The logging company now challenging its $366,089 bill says more than half of it went for extravagant purchases, excessive overtime, equipment stolen by firefighters and other irregularities.

The firm, whose chief witness is the state’s former top fire control supervisor, also claims the state has ignored evidence that a former employee, dismissed the morning of the fire, may have intentionally set the blaze.

--Though a federal judge ruled that a vacationing medical student was negligent when he started a 450-acre fire in central Washington by burning used toilet paper, the judge cut deeply into the U.S. Forest Service’s $466,119 bill.

The judge concluded that the government was 30% negligent for the fire for failing to post signs warning of dry, breezy conditions. Another $65,000 was trimmed from the bill because officials could not prove they used firefighting equipment for which they were seeking reimbursement.

Most fires do not result in legal battles. The government is powerless to even seek reimbursement for the majority. Last year, 377 of Idaho’s 516 forest fires were started by lightning.

Nor are all man-caused fires collectible. A farmer or logger who has taken proper precautions--digging fire lines, manning the perimeter with hoses--only to have unexpected high winds spread a debris fire is not likely to be billed.

But those who burn illegally--by leaving a campfire unattended or burning without a permit--are targeted. So are individuals or companies whose destructive fires can be traced back to the key legal buzzword: negligence.

“The guy who goes out there and throws a match or a cigarette and then leaves, that’s the one who we believe is negligent,” says Bob McNight, a fire control supervisor in Orofino, Ida.

Logging companies and railroads are routinely billed if government fire investigators determine that their careless use of equipment was to blame.

Parents are responsible for their children. California is drawing up a bill for the parents of a 15-year-old Yorba Linda boy whose toy rocket started a 7,000-acre brush fire in Chino Hills on July 12. The blaze cost the state about $500,000 to suppress.

Montana forestry officials are even preparing to bill another state agency. Faulty wiring started a Sept. 21 fire that burned grassland and destroyed a garage owned by the state parks and wildlife department.

Liability insurance covers fires started by logging and utility companies. And, unknown to many property owners, most homeowners’ policies extend to calamities like forest fires.

Knaub’s $43,000 Montana bill and the medical student’s toilet paper blaze, which the court reduced to $132,700, were paid by insurers.

“Most people don’t realize they are covered . . . but they find out real quick once they get a bill,” says Loren Poore, the California Department of Forestry’s chief of fire prevention and law enforcement.

Presented with such proof, most, like Rudy and Shirley Shebala of Kooskia, Ida., pay up.

The Shebalas reimbursed Idaho $369 for dousing a 1987 fire that outgrew the field of stubble they were burning and charred several acres.

Similarly, the Weyerhaeuser Co. did not dispute Washington state’s conclusion that the company logging operation was culpable in a 70-acre fire in 1988.

Allen Garrett, timberlands manager for the firm’s Cascade Operations, said loggers were untrained in firefighting and the company’s water truck was parked too far from the logging operation. When the truck did arrive at the fire, it took awhile to open the tight valves to get water, he added.

The state drew up a $240,000 bill and settled for $180,000.

Other states make similar settlements. Poore says when California enters such negotiations, it strives to get 80% of the bill.

Individuals willing but unable to pay a bill are allowed to make monthly installments. California has received $100 a month since the late 1960s from a man responsible for a fire in Riverside County.

Statistically, Oregon is particularly adept in collections. In 1989, it received nearly 82%, or $790,000, of the $966,000 it billed; the previous year, 74%. Montana’s $90,000 in 1988 was 70% of what it billed. Washington collects about half of the amount it bills. California does not keep such statistics.

Trials are Rare

Civil trials are rare--and not always a success for the government. A jury in Spokane, Wash., earlier this year concurred with a power company and rejected the state’s contention that the company’s failure to trim trees from electric lines negligently caused a fire.

Some trials hinge on negligence. In the toilet paper trial, fledgling physician Mark Wenneker, then an experienced camper, denied negligence. He said he read that burning used toilet paper was the safest and most ecological way of disposing of it in the woods.

In siding with the Forest Service, U.S. District Judge Justin Quackenbush wrote that “the last thing (Wenneker) intended was to harm the environment.” But the camper should have buried the toilet paper with a shovel, Quackenbush said.

Wenneker, now an internist in the Boston area, recently said the fire and court trial have not dampened his enthusiasm for the outdoors and he still avidly camps. However, he declined to discuss the fire.

LeMay, the California agency’s top cop, and several officials in other states contend that there have been fewer illegal and negligent fires since states began sending out bills.

Bill Steele, Washington’s chief fire investigator, estimates that five years ago 25% of the Evergreen State’s forest fires were negligent in origin. Today he pegs it at 10%.

“The word’s getting out about the cost collection program for those areas where negligence can be shown,” LeMay says. “People are really focusing in on, ‘Do I really want to light this match?’ ”