Upper Pine River Fire Protection District has billed a woman $9,000 for costs related to the Blue Ridge Fire, which started in August in the Forest Lakes subdivision north of Bayfield.
Because the wildfire was human-caused and started on Renee Blaisdell’s property, she is legally responsible, said Upper Pine Fire Chief Bruce Evans. Blaisedell lives in Dover, New Hampshire, but owns the property where the fire began.
Most costs were covered by the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control, which had a mutual aid cost-sharing agreement with Upper Pine, which is why the bill was only $9,000.
“We sent (Blaisedell) a bill for the cost of the fire district’s expenses,” Evans said. “She's pretty fortunate that DFPC provided most of the aircraft and 48 hours of mutual aid resources with a type two crew, overhead and some other apparatus and people.”
Upper Pine knows when, where and how the fire started – but not who caused it, Evans said. A woman was illegally staying on Blaisedell’s property when the blaze broke out.
But without eyewitnesses or cellphone photos or videos, investigators couldn’t conclusively blame the woman.
“It was definitely a human-caused fire, but without an eyewitness to say that that person did it, then it’s not going to hold up in court,” Evans said. “Do we burden the taxpayers with additional court expenses?”
By contrast, the Palisades Fire, which destroyed 6,800 homes and killed 12 people in Los Angeles shortly after New Year’s, was recently traced back to a man who allegedly filmed himself lighting objects on fire. That wasn’t the case for the Blue Ridge Fire, Evans said.
“I’ve been involved in fire investigations before where we’ve traced cellphones and been able to track the person that started the fire to their home or back to the fire site,” Evans said. “But in this particular situation, there wasn’t that ability to track that stuff. We had a hard time even triangulating (the) original 911 call.”
sedmondson@durangoherald.com
