California - Attorney General suing gun club for $6.36 million

[ericire12]

http://www.redding.com/news/2008/aug/20/attorney-general-suing-igniters-2006-fires/

By Ryan Sabalow (Contact)
Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Shooters at a gun range in Junction City and rock harvesters in Whitmore who unwittingly sparked separate fires in 2006 are being sued by the California attorney general for repayment of the state’s firefighting costs.

In one lawsuit, the state’s attorneys seek $6.36 million from the managers of the Weaverville Rod & Gun Club and the organizers of a National Rifle Association sanctioned shooting event in which a sparking bullet is alleged to have caused the 3,126-acre Junction Fire, which burned one home.

The suit, filed in late July in Trinity County Superior Court, alleges that the gun club was hosting a “service rifle shoot” on July 29, 2006, in which participants where firing assault weapons, including Ruger Mini 14s and Armalite AR-15s.

One of the rounds sparked in the dry vegetation in the overgrown and poorly maintained shooting area, the lawsuit alleges.

The shooters also had been firing “tracer” rounds, the suit says.

Tracers are illegal incendiary rounds that fire a burst of pyrotechnic light so that shooters can track their aim when firing large numbers of rounds from automatic weapons.

The suit also contends that it was irresponsible for the shooting event’s range master, Raymond Harris, to participate in shooting and for allowing shooters to use spark-prone full-metal jacket rounds on the hot, dry day when the blaze erupted. A full-metal jacket is a traditional lead bullet encased in a metal shell for better penetration when striking a target. Although legal for civilians to shoot in California, they’re generally used for law enforcement or military purposes.

Calls Tuesday to a Raymond Harris listed in Lewiston were not returned. Gun club President Ron Kasper referred questions to the club’s Redding attorney, Jim Pincin, who didn’t return a message left with his secretary late Tuesday afternoon.

Both Harris and Kasper told the Trinity Journal newspaper in Weaverville that the gun club’s managers weren’t negligent the day the blaze started. Vegetation was properly maintained, and incendiary rounds weren’t used, they said.

“I’m telling you and I’m telling everybody else, I would never allow tracer rounds to be fired,” Harris told the paper, adding that using full-metal jacketed bullets are the norm for such events.

Cow Fire

The other suit, filed Aug. 7 in Shasta County Superior Court, seeks $129,508 from those responsible for starting the Cow Fire on Aug. 21, 2006.

Investigators with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection allege that an employee with Orland-based L&W Stone Corp. was using a front-end loader to dig rocks out of the ground at the Cow Creek Ranch near Whitmore Road.

Investigators believe the loader’s bucket scraped a rock and sparked the blaze.

The loader’s operator tried to put out the flames, but without any fire-suppression equipment, it quickly spread to 144 acres.

The suit alleges that the operator was negligent because he didn’t wet the ground around the rock-removal site, and the law requires firefighting equipment be kept nearby.

Calls to L&W Stone Corp.’s office in Orland weren’t returned Tuesday.

Cal Fire spokeswoman Janet Upton, speaking on behalf of the attorney general’s office, said the suits were filed almost two years after the fires because firefighting cost-recovery lawsuits have a 24-month statute of limitations.

Different than criminal charges, civil suits seek only to recoup the state’s cost of extinguishing the blazes, she said.

[jnevis]

Yet another law abiding range/club that will probably be shut down because they "may have, possbily, could have been," the cause of something.

The SHERIFF's department range (open to the public on weekends) in Tulare County Ca was shut down temporarily, looked like forever, because the farmer on the back side found bullet fragments in his field and said the range aprtons were shooting at him.  Found out the bullets strinking the front of the berm were pushing out stuff on the back.

[Ron J]

Isn't the Kali AG "Moonbeam" Brown?