Fire victims still waiting for government compensation

By Maline Hazle

July 3, 2000 Web posted at: 10:13 AM EDT (1413 GMT)

In this story: Recovery uneven Rebuilding lives RELATED STORIES

LEWISTON, California (Redding Record Searchlight) -- As Gary Norder celebrates his 51st birthday today, he can't help but contemplate how his once-tranquil life has changed in the year since a maverick prescribed burn rampaged through his world.

He and his teen-age sons lost everything but their lives in the infamous Lowden Fire, a saga shared by at least 23 other families who lived scattered across the 2,000 acres incinerated by the blaze.

"From a year ago everything is completely different in my life but one thing; where I live, the physical location," said Norder, an accountant who once worked out of an office in his detached garage.

The garage is gone. So is the 1,700-square-foot house. Norder replaced them with an aging mobile home that he moved onto the barren acre homesite almost before the smoke cleared.

"It's a real small community, and all of a sudden 23, 24 families were looking for a home," he says of his decision to homestead on his own land. "I'm kinda stuck. I look at my scenery and I don't really want to live here; my kids don't like to be home anymore because it ain't home anymore."

Though the U.S. Bureau of Land Management quickly admitted responsibility for having lost control of a fire meant only to burn 100 acres of star thistle, Norder, like many of the fire victims, hasn't yet seen a dime.

He doesn't expect any money soon; he hasn't yet filed a claim. Under federal law he has another year to do so, but thinks his will be filed within the next two months.

In the meantime, after having lost several clients whose tax and business records went up in flames, Norder bid on and won a postal route to augment his income.

"Everything is kind of on hold," he said, "but the bills go on."

As the first anniversary of the Lowden Fire arrives, the victims are in various stages of recovery, and highly sought-after by reporters from New Mexico and the major television networks. A crew from ABC's "20-20" was in town last week.

The reporters are gathering information that could be applied to those who lost their homes a month ago when a National Park Service prescribed burn wiped out 258 homes in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Lowden is a small-scale version of that catastrophe, and, some victims say, a valuable lesson that went unheeded by government bureaucrats. The Lowden victims have advice for Los Alamos: hurry up and wait.

Some Lowden victims have collected from the government, which so far has approved 48 settlements totaling about $400,000. That's an average of only about $8,333 each.

As of three weeks ago (the latest figures available), 249 claims had been filed and 53 of those have been withdrawn or rejected, said BLM spokesman Jeff Fontana. Another 148 of the claims have not been processed.

That process is cumbersome, said Darin Wright, a young attorney handling many of the cases. The 33-year-old Weaverville native, who practiced law in Hawaii for six years before moving to the San Francisco Bay area, came to Lewiston to help out parents of boyhood friends. Now he represents more than 60 Lewiston families.

Once a claim is filed, Wright said, the government has six months to respond and sometimes the haggling resembles dealings with street vendors in Third World countries.

For example, Wright said, he filed a "relatively small" claim for two classic cars that remains unsettled several months later.

"We had requested what we thought was fair value, but they came back much lower, so we countered with something we thought they would take," Wright said. "The BLM came semi-close to that figure but then they sent it to the Department of Justice attorneys for approval and they knocked it down again."

All claims for more than $25,000 are sent to the Justice Department for review, BLM spokesman Jeff Fontana said.

If the government doesn't respond to a claim within six months, either by negotiating or denying it, the claimant can sue for damages in federal district court, Wright said. He's heard nothing about several claims filed almost six months ago and expects to sue by mid-month, he said.

But some of the larger claims have not been filed because appraisals and other information are not finished, Wright said. He predicted that some of those claims will be "well into seven figures."

That's because the claims include not just rebuilding costs, but request compensation for aesthetic damages and emotional distress, costs Wright expects the government to dispute and damages he says are every bit as real as lost homes and furniture.

"The indication is they don't believe they have to pay emotional distress damages, but we won't settle; we'll go to court," Wright said.

But every claim must be carefully scrutinized, said BLM's Fontana. And even though the BLM was responsible for the fire, there are millions of dollars at stake.

"It's the taxpayers' money we're dealing with," Fontana said. "I don't want to imply that we would think somebody would cheat . . . but it has to be established that the fire actually caused them injury."

For example, he said, a real estate person who was listing a house destroyed by flames can't claim damages. Only the homeowner can.

Documentation is important, too, he said, but the BLM knows that records were destroyed in many cases.

"If we get into a question of reasonable doubt, our policy is to err on the side of the claimant," he said.

Some Lewiston residents aren't waiting for the BLM money.

Bea and John Berry moved into their new place about six weeks ago.

"We have a lovely new house and all new furniture," said Bea Berry, a 67-year-old retired minister and interpreter for the deaf. John Berry, 69, is a retired state employee.

"We were fortunate to have good insurance and were able to get government loans . . . but BLM hasn't paid us anything at all yet," Bea Berry said.

Like many of their neighbors, the Berrys lost pictures, mementos, their very history. They also mourn the lost trees, the scorched remains of their once beautiful surroundings.

The BLM has planted new trees and "they say in 40 years we won't know the difference," said Bea Berry. "John and I are senior citizens; not in OUR lifetime. The trees they gave us are 18 inches tall."

But the Berrys "don't dwell on the irreplaceable" and are planting their own, bigger trees, she said. They are "just totally thankful that people have been so kind, so wonderfully kind."

Despite her upbeat attitude, Bea Berry chokes with tears when she thinks about the people who lost their homes in the Los Alamos fire and the Lewiston lessons she believes went unlearned.

"Our hearts went out to all those people," she said. "To think it happened again, on an even larger scale, just makes you wonder why."

Other Lewiston neighbors are in various stages of rebuilding.

There's Ray Petersen, who was one of the first to get started when about 65 helpers showed up for an old-fashioned "house raising" at Halloween.

"We expected 10 or 12 people, but friends told friends and people showed up from near and far," Petersen said last week during a break in the Sheetrock work.

Some of those former strangers still drop by to help.

Petersen, 55, his wife Donna, "somewhat younger," their 23-year-old son, Troy, and family friend Heather Fritts, 20, are doing much of the work themselves.

They got a head start on rebuilding because they owned a lot adjacent to their house. On July 2, the day the fire swept through, they had just picked up a building permit for a house and bought materials to build the foundation on that second lot.

They'll move into the new house soon, but not for long, Petersen said. The family is thinking of moving to someplace near Weaverville, someplace pretty.

"We'll rebuild the house we lost," Petersen said. "This might be a pleasant place for you because you never saw it before."

The Bible, he says, refers to "the abomination of decimation," and that's what he feels when he looks around the place.

Petersen says he's learned one thing in the last year, advice he thinks should be heeded by one and all.

"Don't get too excited about possessions because they could be gone in an instant," he said. "And it's amazing how quickly you can collect junk."

He mourns the loss of medals won by his brother who was killed in Vietnam and a desk his father built in the 1920s, but those losses pale when he imagines what it might have been to lose his son or his wife.

Petersen also has advice for federal agencies that are responsible for prescribed burns.

He thinks they should stop all burns until foresters, environmentalists and "common sense people, not just government people," come up with a better plan.

"Don't take a hot dry day with a wind and decide to light it off," he said.

Mistakes by federal officials allowed 'controlled burn' to become raging Los Alamos wildfire, report says
California fire burns Lewiston homes

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