"The Fiery Touch"

THE ESPERANZA FIRE, THE ENGINE CREW, AND THE ARSONIST

When a jury returns to a packed courtroom to announce the verdict in a capital murder case, every noise -- even a chair scraping or a door opening -- cracks loud. That's how it was at the trial of Raymond Lee Oyler, accused of murder for setting Southern California's Esperanza Fire, which in the fall of 2006 fatally burned five men on a U.S. Forest Service engine crew. As the jurors filed into the Riverside County Superior Court room on March 6, 2009, they had to work hard to keep their decision off their faces.

The courtroom spectators, who hurried back when they learned that the jury had concluded deliberations, separated like families at a bad church wedding. Firefighters, victims' relatives, and their supporters filled the pew-like benches on the side nearest the jury box. Some had driven many miles, and had arrived breathless at the last minute. The fire people looked clean and upright -- and unspeakably sad.

The wind at first blew gently as the fire began that October night back in 2006. It whispered and soughed around Cabazon Peak, a barren and uninhabited pile of rock and chaparral in the narrow Banning Pass, a legendary fire ground and the main east-west artery into Southern California. Just after 1 a.m., the bulky outline of Cabazon Peak glowed with the light of a false dawn, cast by growing flames from an arsonist’s fire set at the base of the Peak. Before first light, the gentle breeze would be replaced by a roaring Santa Ana wind that turned what had been a running wildfire into an exploding inferno.

The five crew members of Forest Service Engine 57 died in the firestorm while trying to protect a home in the Twin Pines neighborhood, about 30 houses on a steep ridge face -- typical wildland/urban interface, where development chews into previously wild and still unforgiving territory.

Two-and-a-half years later, Raymond Oyler, a local garage mechanic with a record of minor drug offenses, would stand in the dock in Riverside County criminal court, charged with deliberately setting the fatal Esperanza Fire and more than 20 other fires that year. The five deaths were the first time an entire Forest Service engine crew had been wiped out. Oyler's conviction and death sentence, after a two-month trial, was a first as well -- the first time, so far as it's known, that anyone was convicted of first-degree murder for setting a wildland fire.

During the penalty phase of the trial, the same judge and jury would decide whether Oyler's conviction justified imposition of the death penalty.

The most wrenching testimony and evidence had been withheld from the first phase, so as not to prejudice the jury as it determined guilt or innocence. When Maria Loutzenhiser, the first of the family members to take the stand, testified about the loss of her husband, Cap. Mark Loutzenhiser, she had trouble just putting sentences together. Her testimony brought nearly the entire courtroom to tears.

Jess McLean's older brother, Jason, managed to articulate the common rage of the survivors.

"The way he died pisses me off," said Jason. "If my brother would have died in a fire that was started by lightning, it would have been easier to deal with. My brother got murdered, and that's something I don't know how to deal with. He should not be dead. I have a rage that I can't even explain to you. He knew the risks of his job. It will never be right."

After six days of such testimony, on March 18, 2009, the jury decided promptly and unanimously recommended the death penalty. On June 5, 2009, the judge formally imposed that sentence.

The conviction of Raymond Oyler for murder would have been unthinkable a century or even a few decades ago. Swift justice will not bring any of the victims back to life, but it sends a new and unequivocal sign of community respect for those who suffer irretrievable loss while engaged in defense of lives and property. The Oyler case stands as a warning to every would-be fire starter: Tolerance for the torch has gone the way of the Old West.

The High Country News featured a story by Maclean in its August 02, 2010 issue, accompanied by original art created by Canadian news and blues artist Paul Lachine, on the Esperanza Fire, Oyler's trial, and the changes that Oyer's conviction portend for wildland fire arsonists in the future.

John Maclean, award-winning author of three previous books on wildfire disasters, is at work on another -- a book on the Esperanza Fire. Maclean first visited the site of the fire in 2007, the spring after it occurred, and he has returned many times since. He covered the lengthy Oyler trial in Riverside, California.

There currently is no firm publication date for the book-in-progress on the Esperanza Fire. As matters move forward, updates will appear on this website.

Maclean's first book, Fire on the Mountain, about the South Canyon Fire of 1994 on Storm King Mountain in Colorado, was reissued in a modern classics edition in December, 2009, by Harper Collins Perennial.

 

 

Maclean is both a journalist and a gifted storyteller; he spent much of a 30-year newspaper career in Washington, D.C., as a Chicago Tribune correspondent covering national and international news. He is a frequent speaker at wildfire academies and other gatherings, and is a member of the Seeley Lake Volunteer Fire Department in Montana. For a man whose early career was in the Midwest and then the nation's capital, Maclean's still a Western boy, linked by his family's ties to Montana, where he spent much of his youth.