The 2007 Moonlight Fire was a large
wildfire
A wildfire, forest fire, bushfire, wildland fire or rural fire is an unplanned, uncontrolled and unpredictable fire in an area of Combustibility and flammability, combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire ...
that burned near
Westwood in
Lassen County
Lassen County () is a county in the northeastern portion of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 32,730. The county seat and only incorporated city is Susanville. Lassen County comprises the Susanville, Calif ...
,
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
.
The fire, which started on September 3, scorched before being declared contained on September 19.
[ Approximately 2,300 firefighters were involved in fighting the fire. Strong winds pushed smoke to the ]Sacramento Valley
, photo =Sacramento Riverfront.jpg
, photo_caption= Sacramento
, map_image=Map california central valley.jpg
, map_caption= The Central Valley of California
, location = California, United States
, coordinates =
, boundaries = Sierra Nevada (ea ...
, Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Gov ...
, Nevada
Nevada ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. N ...
and Idaho
Idaho ( ) is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. To the north, it shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border with the province of British Columbia. It borders the states of Montana and Wyom ...
. In Plumas County
Plumas County () is a county in the Sierra Nevada of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 19,790. The county seat is Quincy, and the only incorporated city is Portola. The largest community in the county is ...
, 500 homes were threatened by the Moonlight Fire; 100 residences were evacuated near Greenville in the North Arm area of Indian Valley, as the wild fire was still raging in the Plumas National Forest
Plumas National Forest is a 1,146,000-acre (4,638 km2) United States National Forest located at the northern terminus of the Sierra Nevada, in northern California. The Forest was named after its primary watershed, the Rio de las Plumas, or F ...
.
Progression
The Moonlight Fire began on Labor Day, September 3, 2007. InciWeb records that the Northern California Incident Management Team 1 declared the fire fully contained on September 16, and fully controlled on September 24, 2007. The corresponding Cal Fire page says that the Moonlight Fire was declared fully contained on September 19. Firefighting costs amounted to $31.5million.
Effects
The Moonlight Fire resulted in zero fatalities and 34 injuries. The fire destroyed seven structures: two residences and five outbuildings. One other outbuilding was damaged.
Legal proceedings
The cause of the fire was never clearly established. Federal and state officials accused Sierra Pacific Industries
Sierra Pacific Industries is the second-largest lumber producer in the United States. Located in Anderson, California
Anderson is a city in Shasta County, California, approximately 10 miles south of Redding. Its population is 11,323 as of the ...
of negligence in the hiring and supervision of a logging contractor.
In 2009, the Department of Justice sued Sierra Pacific, the logging contractor, and smaller parties, seeking almost $800 million in damages. Spooked by the precarious state of the lumber market at the time and the size of the sought-for damages, in 2012 Sierra Pacific and the other defendants entered into a voluntary settlement of $122.5 million. Sierra Pacific's contribution to the settlement consisted of $47 million and 22,500 acres of land, while the other defendants paid a total of $8 million. Sierra Pacific admitted no wrongdoing through the settlement, and though it was voluntary, CFO
The chief financial officer (CFO) is an officer of a company or organization that is assigned the primary responsibility for managing the company's finances, including financial planning, management of financial risks, record-keeping, and financ ...
Mark Emmerson told ''Forbes'' in a 2018 interview that they "had a gun to our head."
District Court denial of motion to terminate settlement
On October 9, 2014, Sierra Pacific and other defendants filed a motion in Federal Court to terminate the settlement on the grounds that the investigation and prosecution were flawed and corrupt. As a result, on October 14, 2014, Chief Judge of the Eastern District of California Morrison C. England issued an order which referred the case to Alex Kozinski
Alex Kozinski (; born July 23, 1950) is a Romanian-American jurist and lawyer who was a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 1985 to 2017. He was a prominent and inf ...
, then-Chief Judge of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for the assignment of a judge outside of the Eastern District of California to assure impartiality. Judge Kozinski declined to appoint a judge outside of the Eastern District to hear the case, which was then reassigned to Senior District Judge William B. Shubb, who issued an order denying the motion on April 17, 2015.
The court ruled: "Defendants have failed to identity even a single instance of fraud on the court, certainly none on the part of any attorney for the government. They repeatedly argue that fraud on the court can be found by considering the totality of the allegations. Here, the whole can be no greater than the sum of its parts. Stripped of all its bluster, defendants' motion is wholly devoid of any substance."[
]
Appeals Court ruling
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed on July 13, 2017. ''United States v. Sierra Pacific Industries'', 862 F.3d 1157 (9th Cir. 2017). In a unanimous opinion, the court ruled that all of Sierra Pacific's accusations were legally insufficient, because it "voluntarily settled instead of going to trial" and "bound tselfnot to seek future relief." In addition, the court explained that the accusations of misconduct that Sierra Pacific claimed to have learned of after the settlement "do not constitute fraud on the court," and it was not a fraud for government counsel "to have their own theory of the case and discuss it with their witnesses."
Supreme Court denial of certiorari
On June 25, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari
In law, ''certiorari'' is a court process to seek judicial review of a decision of a lower court or government agency. ''Certiorari'' comes from the name of an English prerogative writ, issued by a superior court to direct that the record of ...
. Therefore, all appeals have been exhausted and the case will not be heard by the Supreme Court.
Cal Fire sanctions
In 2014, Plumas County court judge Leslie Nichols ruled that Cal Fire had committed a "vast array" of "egregious and reprehensible" evidentiary violations during its investigation of the Moonlight Fire, rebuking an agency investigator for providing untruthful sworn testimony, destroying notes, and providing contradictory statements in his final report on the fire. Judge Nichols ordered Cal Fire to pay $30 million in sanctions. Cal Fire appealed the decision to the California Supreme Court, but the appeal was denied and the matter sent before a lower court. Finally, in October of 2020, Cal Fire was ordered to pay $15 million in sanctions for the evidence disclosure violations during its probe, concluding the legal struggle between Cal Fire and Sierra Pacific Industries.
See also
* Storrie Fire (2000)
* Walker Fire (2019)
* 2020 Lassen County wildfires
* Beckwourth Complex fires
The Beckwourth Complex was a wildfire complex that burned in the Plumas National Forest in Plumas and Lassen counties. The two major fires of the complex, the Dotta Fire and the Sugar Fire, started on June 30 and July 2 northeast of Beckwourth, ...
(2021)
* Dixie Fire
The Dixie Fire was an enormous wildfire in Butte, Plumas, Lassen, Shasta, and Tehama Counties, California. It was named after Dixie Road, near where the fire started in Butte County. The fire began in the Feather River Canyon near Cresta Dam ...
(2021)
References
{{2007 California wildfires
Sierra Nevada (United States)
2007 California wildfires
Wildfires in Plumas County, California