Concern Over Arson-for-Profit Heats Up During Fire Season : Environment: Officials fear those who light blazes to create jobs. Forest Service policies allow salvage of charred timber.

As another Western fire season heats up and the fortunes of logging towns decline, concern is mounting about arsonists of an especially dangerous sort--those who torch the woods to create jobs.

The government can spend $1 million a day to fight a big forest fire, creating a boom for rural towns as fire crews contract out for services and supplies ranging from sandwiches to bulldozers.

Then, once the blaze is out, the blackened timber remaining can be a bonanza for loggers.

“We worry that they’ll say, ‘That was a good deal last year, let’s see if we can do it again this year,”’ said Rick Gibson, fire prevention director for the Oregon Department of Forestry.

Adding to the temptation, environmentalists say, are U.S. Forest Service policies that allow salvage of charred timber from areas that were off limits to logging before they burned.

“Here’s an agency that puts out Smokey the Bear posters saying ‘Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires,’ and then they run programs that reward arson,” said Mark Hubbard with the Oregon Natural Resources Council.

Job-hunting fires are hardly a new idea. They’ve been part of Western lore since the Great Depression, when desperate residents reportedly set blazes in the forest and then hurried into town to be hired on fire crews.

These days, desperation has returned to the forest. Protections for the northern spotted owl have sharply reduced logging on federal lands in Washington, Oregon and Northern California. Thousands of timber workers have lost their jobs, pulling the economic rug out from under entire communities.

In timber towns where unemployment hits double digits, it’s not uncommon to hear out-of-work loggers make dark threats about burning the woods.

But angry tavern talk is one thing; striking the match is another. While there are plenty of rumors and speculation about job-hunting fires, proof is hard to come by. Investigators in Washington, Oregon and California concede that not a single case of suspected wildland arson-for-profit has been confirmed in recent years.

“That’s not to say there haven’t been some,” said John Ruff, special agent with the U.S. Forest Service in San Francisco.

In Washington state, officials each year investigate two or three wildland arson fires in which an economic motive is suspected, said Bill Steele, chief investigator for the state’s Department of Natural Resources. But none has resulted in a conviction, he said.

In Northern California, investigators suspect economic motives in at least two strings of arson fires last summer, Ruff said. The largest blaze, dubbed the Barker Fire, scorched 5,600 acres of brushy timberland and was one of a dozen similar fires near the depressed timber town of Hayfork.

The Hayfork fires appeared to be set by someone trying to burn a lot of trees, said Paul Bertagna, an officer with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

He said nearly all the fires were lit on steep, hard-to-reach slopes off remote roads, and nearly all were started in midafternoon, when the woods were at their driest.

In the Barker Fire, there were no lightning strikes, no children playing nearby, no sign of sparks or cigarette butts flung from cars. There also was no suspect, but Bertagna remains convinced that the fire’s cause was arson.

“The only source remaining was if someone went there to intentionally set the fire,” he said. “Why would a person want to do that? Probably economics.”

In California, 10% to 15% of all human-caused wildland fires each year are attributed to arson, while the rest are accidental. Of arsonists who are caught, most appear to set fires for some emotional gratification, doing it for revenge, attention or the thrill of watching trees burn.

But profit-motivated firebugs may make up a larger share of those who get away, Ruff said.

“Obviously, someone who is doing it for economic reasons is putting a little more thought into what they’re doing,” Ruff said. “They’re making more of an effort to cover their tracks.”

Forest Service investigators insist every major arson case is pursued thoroughly. But environmentalists like Hubbard question their diligence, saying the agency’s allegiance is split--committed on one hand to preventing fires, pressured on the other to go easy on the timber industry.

“When it comes to Forest Service prosecution of things that even remotely are tied to timber interests, it seems to be the general trend that they can’t find a suspect, the investigation is ongoing, and they can’t release any information,” Hubbard said.

He points to the Warner Creek Fire in Oregon’s Willamette National Forest, which in October, 1991, scorched more than 9,000 acres, all within a spotted-owl preserve off limits to logging.

It took firefighters nearly two weeks to contain the stubborn blaze, at a cost of at least $10 million.

Forest Service investigators concluded the cause was arson but would not speculate publicly on a motive. No suspects have been arrested, and the investigation continues, they said.

The Forest Service, meanwhile, has recommended opening the burned area to the logging of 39 million board feet of timber. The agency estimated the salvage sale would provide 770 jobs over three years, with a payroll of $40 million.

That a poor way to discourage arson, Hubbard says, especially at a time when the government’s regular timber sales are shrinking and loggers are looking more to salvage operations to make up the cut.

But Dewey Tate, a fire prevention specialist at the agency’s regional headquarters in Portland, said that economically motivated arson, while a concern, has not been documented as a big problem.

“I don’t believe anyone has established that the logging community has any more significant tie to arson fires than any other group,” Tate said.

Indeed, many rural residents take offense at suggestions that they would torch the forest.

“Most people who work in the woods want a healthy, productive forest,” said Bob Lindsay, executive director of the Willamette Timbermen Assn. in Oregon. “They don’t want something that’s burnt.”

Fire investigator Bertagna agreed.

“Most people respect the timbered areas,” he said. “They like the beauty of those areas and don’t want to destroy it.”

Then again, Bertagna added, when it comes to setting wildfires, it doesn’t matter what most people do.

“It only takes one,” he said.