Among them: she is not to set foot in a forest. Other indirect destruction included sediment runoff into a reservoir that is used as a water source for Denver. Her estranged husband, John, was a bad drinker, a man with a mean streak and a checkered work history. Investigators say that it's not uncommon for some firefighters to start fires to get attention for their heroism in putting them out.
This was just not fair. Under the fluorescent lighting of a federal courtroom in September , a lawyer fixed his gaze on Barton, who had been called as a witness in a civil suit seeking to hold the U. Forest Service liable for the fire. On Saturday, June 8, , I left my home and my husband handed me a letter. He told me he had burned the divorce papers, earlier in the week when he was in Arkansas.
He was suppose to sign the papers. I left for work at and took the letter with me. The letter was very upsetting to me. On one day alone, it ran 19 miles. It put up a smoke plume so massive that it created its own weather. Barton was the first to report the fire, originally telling fellow rangers she was out on patrol when she smelled smoke, investigated, and came upon a runaway campfire.
But almost immediately, investigators questioned her story. A week after the fire started, during an interview with detectives in the forest clearing where it began, Barton buckled under questioning, admitted to starting the fire and signed a confession. In that statement, Barton said her husband gave her the letter as she left the house for work the morning of the fire.
When she saw the fire ring while on patrol, she said, she had an idea. When Barton was asked about this discrepancy during the civil trial, she said her memory was unclear and that she believed she received the letter a day or two before the fire.
A story in the Colorado Springs Gazette, based on an interview with Barton, described the letter as being something her husband had written to her months before the fire.
Barton also gave conflicting accounts of what the letter said. In her testimony, Barton said she did read the letter and that her husband apologized to her in it and said he wanted to work things out. John Barton also changed his story several months after his first interview with authorities in and said he did give Terry a letter. Meanwhile, Forest Service agent Paul Steensland, an expert in wildfire investigations who worked on the Hayman case, had a question central to the confession: If Terry Barton burned a letter, where was the paper?
Investigators found no remnants of a letter when examining the campfire ring. Ash from the ring that was sent to a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives lab turned up no microscopic specks of paper. But a pile of fine ash had remained inside the ring, and Steensland knew from investigating hundreds of fires that paper is surprisingly resilient.
In a test in his own California backyard in , bits of burned paper remained present in a fire ring more than a month after being lit, having survived wind, rain and sun. Investigators found three matches stacked close together inside the fire ring, but Barton had initially claimed she used only one to light the letter. Barton later handed agents a matchbook — with three matches missing — that she said the match she used came from.
And what about this ring, Steensland wondered? It had grass growing inside it. One large rock seemed to have been deliberately propped up on a smaller stone, creating an opening in the ring that would allow the flames to escape. Agents could even see the indentations in the dirt where the rocks had previously been located. The day the fire started was windy — gusts to 35 mph near Lake George — and hot.
Crazy Clothes, Arizona Wildfires History, Investigators say that it's not uncommon for some firefighters to start fires to get attention for their heroism in putting them out. Opening hours, reviews, phone number. It was good that I didn't lose my humor - though it was as terrible as before. Are you questioning me? Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart, The Hayman Fire was a forest fire started on June 8, , 35 miles 56 km northwest of Colorado Springs, Colorado and 22 miles 35 km southwest of Denver, Colorado and was, for 18 years, the largest wildfire in the state's recorded history at over , acres.
Amid a devastating fire season that has engulfed more than 1. Copyright Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
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