According to authorities, a new Northern California wildland fire in Butte County that exploded overnight into the state’s largest blaze this wildfire season was allegedly started by a man who pushed a burning car into a gully on Wednesday night. Destroying structures and prompting thousands of evacuations, these actions will be viewed as a highly serious crime.
Alleged Arsonist Linked to Northern California’s Largest Wildfire
The 48-year-old arson suspect linked to starting the Park Fire in Butte County near the city of Chico was arrested Thursday morning and jailed without bail, said Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey. Officials were able to identify the suspect as Ronnie Dean Stout on Thursday evening, ahead of his arraignment on Monday.
Stout was allegedly spotted just before three-o-clock in the afternoon, local time on Wednesday, pushing a car that was on fire down a gully called “Alligator Hole” in Bidwell Park, near Chico, Ramsey said.
“The car went down an embankment approximately 60 feet and burned completely, spreading flames that caused the Park Fire,” Ramsey said in a statement.
Ramsey elaborated that the man, who was later identified as Stout, was allegedly seen calmly leaving the area, attempting to blend in with the masses of other park visitors who were actively fleeing the scene as the fire expanded rapidly.
According to the DA’s office, Stout has two previous “strike” felony convictions and, as such, will be charged with those two charges, alongside any arson charge that is determined by the evidence to be appropriate, come his Monday arraignment.
The “Three Strikes and You’re Out” law in California imposes a life sentence for almost any crime, no matter how minor, if the defendant had two prior convictions for crimes defined as serious or violent by the California Penal Code, according to Stanford Law School. In this way, if it can be proven that Stout is indeed the man responsible for this heinous destructive crime, he will face a life sentence.
In addition to the Park Fire in Butte County (the largest fire burning in the state), the Durkee Fire in Oregon (the largest fire burning in the nation) continued filling West Coast skies with smoke on Thursday. Officials said that gusty winds and treacherous terrain have caused substantial challenges to firefighters battling both blazes.
By Thursday afternoon, the Park Fire had burned over 124,000 acres, destroyed an undetermined number of structures, and caused the Butte County Sheriff’s Department to order evacuations for rural foothill communities in the area, including nearly the entire town of Cohasset, which has a population of about 400.
Firefighters Battle Challenging Conditions in Butte County
Authorities said more than 1,100 firefighters were fighting the flames Thursday morning, using helicopters and bulldozers to cut fire lines in a desperate attempt to prevent the fire from spreading to homes in the densely populated areas of north Chico.
“That fire has just not cooperated with us in terms of the weather. I don’t like making excuses, and I don’t like fires outpacing me, so that’s a hard thing to admit,” Tyson Albrecht of the U.S. Forest Service, the incident commander on the Durkee Fire for Northwest Team 6, said at the briefing. “This fire and the weather that we’ve been experiencing has been really challenging. It will continue to challenge us, but we will continue to keep swinging away out there to minimize those impacts.”
