National Park After Dark - Wildfire or a DEA Cover-up? Yosemite National Park

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

In the summer of 2013, one of the largest wildfires in California history tore through the Sierra Nevada, burning more than 257,000 acres and leaving homes, ranches and beloved landscapes destroyed in its wake. As the Rim Fire grew, so did the rumors about who was responsible. Was it a drug cartel, rafters, government mismanagement, or a local hunter who knew these forests better than most? COME SEE US ON TOUR - LIMITED TICKETS LEFT! For a full list of our sources, visit npadpodcast.com/episodes For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials: Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdark Support the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page! Thank you to this week’s partners! Ka’ChavaGo to Ka’Chava: The Premium All-in-One Nutrition Shake | Ka'Chava and use code NPAD for 15% off your first order. IQBARGet 20% off all IQBAR products, plus FREE shipping. Text PARK to 64000. Message and data rates may apply. See terms for details. QuinceFind the fall pieces you’ll reach for most at Women's Best Sellers — Mongolian Cashmere, Silk & Care. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, plus get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. SmallsGet 60% off your first order, plus free shipping AND free treats for life at Fresh Human-Grade Cat Food Delivery | Smalls. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wildfires can change a landscape in a matter of hours. Forests that have stood for generations can disappear. Wildlife is displaced, livestock killed, and homes reduced to foundations surrounded by ash. Even after the flames are gone, the loss remains. For the people who know these places best, it was losing the view from their kitchen window. The trail they had walked since childhood, the pasture their family had worked for generations, and a landscape they assumed would always be there. In the summer of 2013, that kind of loss came to California's Sierra Nevada,

when the rim fire tore across more than a quarter million acres. At the time, it was the third largest wildfire in California's history, and for weeks, thousands of firefighters battled a fire that consumed everything in front of it. But when something this devastating happens, eventually people begin asking how it happened. and then they start asking who is responsible. Before long, people were blaming marijuana growers, drug cartels, rafters, environmentalists, the Forest Service, and eventually one of their own. Because when people lose a place they love, knowing how it happened isn't enough. They need someone to hold accountable.

Welcome to National Park After Dark. Hey everyone, welcome back to National Park After Dark. My name's Danielle. And I'm Cassie, and we're going to Yosemite today. Yeah, yeah, we are. And you were just there in the flesh. I was. It was. I was there.

And that's actually what inspired me to cover this episode today because I went to visit. I visit a good friend of mine, Claire, who is a guide in Yosemite. She's amazing if you got her, tell her I say hi. But she showed me around Yosemite in a really cool way. And I got to see it from her point of view, which is really cool. If you know a guide in a location, they just know all the best spots. But while we were there, I was at the Evergreen Lodge and I met a bunch of other guides who asked me to cover this subject on the podcast. So, hello, everybody.

I am officially covering it. And it's a really interesting story that I really didn't know anything about. So we're going to talk about the Rimfire today. Personal request. It's a first, I think. For someone to come up to your face and be like, please cover this. and you say, okay. Yeah.

Yeah, maybe it is. Maybe it is a first. Well, before you fulfill all their dreams, we do have a couple things to say before we say more things for the next hour. And that's, we're going on tour. And this is just your weekly reminder of that. And we just realized, you can tell we haven't done this before. We just realized we haven't said a formal, hey, just so you know we're doing VIP. in select cities.

And we thought we would mention that because it's important. Maybe you want to know what that is. We're doing VIPs where we're doing an intimate Q&A that comes with signed tour posters with your ticket. And we're doing it in a select amount of cities. So check out where you're going. I know we're definitely doing it in Chicago and there's a bunch of tickets left. So if you want to see us in Chicago and get VIP, it is certainly available.

But yeah, check out your city where you are. see if VIP is available because we are doing it and it'll be really fun. We can chat, ask us anything you want. Anything. You know, I'm an open book. Yeah, that's true. Well, maybe not. Yeah. I have like a PR person. You know, in interviews with celebrities, they're like, hey, yeah, you can have 20 minutes with her, but you can't ask her this. Don't even think about bringing this up. Think about asking. My rule is don't ask me about any movies. Yeah, you won't get far in that conversation. So you might as well just not do it. Yeah.

Just assume I've never seen a movie in my whole life. And do not ask me at the VIP. I'm going to kick down. All right. Tell me a Yosemite story. Yes. So we are going to Yosemite. And we're actually also going to the Stanilas National Forest, which is right outside of borders, Yosemite.

and extends outward for a long time beyond it. This fire actually started in the National Forest and then made its way into Yosemite. So we're kind of all in this region. And this is a really interesting story because it's not only about this fire that ravaged the area, but it's about the cause of it and kind of a lot of drama that unfolded and rumors and a lot of things that happened following this fire. Okay. In the summer of 2013, California was in the middle of a serious drought. In the central Sierra Nevada, the effects were being felt across the San Alas National Forest.

The nearly 900,000 acre forest stretches across the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada, just west and northwest of Yosemite National Park. It's the kind of place where people come to spend their summers outside, camping beneath towering pines, hiking and backpacking into the mountains, fishing along its rivers and lakes, swimming, boating, and exploring miles of forest roads. There are developed campgrounds and small mountain communities, but also enormous stretches of rugged backcountry where roads disappear and the terrain become steep, remote, and difficult to access. And by August of 2013, all of it was incredibly dry. The central Sierra Nevada was experiencing its second straight year of a significant drought. Over the previous two years, the area had received only about 50 to 70% of its normal precipitation,

and in the eight months leading up to August, it had received less than half of what was typical. Summers there are naturally dry. Most of the moisture that feeds these forests arrives during the colder months, much of it falling as snow at higher elevations, with very little precipitation typically falling between June and September. But after two unusually dry years, the forest was heading into the hottest part of the summer already starved for moisture. Grass and brush had dried out, fallen branches and logs contained less moisture, and dead vegetation covering the forest floor was ready to burn. The longer the drought continued, the more fuel there was available to a potential wildfire. And because so much of the national forest is made up of steep slopes and deep remote canyons, any fire that's did start could be incredibly difficult for firefighters to reach and contain. Conditions had become

serious enough that the Forest Service placed fire restrictions across the National Forest, limiting where visitors could have campfires. And this was mostly, it had to be in an established campground in a campsite at an established like fire pit. You couldn't just like have fires anywhere. By the middle of August, the forest was primed to burn. That summer, 30, year old Keith Matthew Emerald found himself back in the same area where he had grown up, this time on a solo hunting trip. Keith knew these forests well and with deer season underway, he packed up his bow and headed into the backcountry around Jawbone Ridge, near the confluence of the Clavvy and the Tuolomey rivers. This was an incredibly remote part of the forest.

Jawbone Ridge rises above the river canyon where the slopes are incredibly steep and access is limited. For someone hunting alone, getting in and out meant navigating a landscape that was already difficult under normal circumstances. But on the afternoon of August 17th while he was out there, smoke began rising from the area. At around 3.15 p.m., a fire was reported near Jawbone Ridge, and it quickly became clear that Keith was in a dangerous position. He was still down in the canyon as the fire began spreading through the surrounding vegetation, cutting off his ability to hike back out the way he had come. With a fire blocking his way out, Keith stayed down in the canyon and waited. He knew that the column of smoke rising above him would eventually bring firefighting

aircrafts to the area and that being spotted from the air might be the best chance for him to get out. So he made his way towards the river and climbed onto a large flat rock where he would be easier to see from above. About an hour after the fire was reported, a helicopter came into the canyon. At the controls was 70-year-old Jerry Bonner, a veteran pilot with decades of experience flying helicopters in California. From the air, Jerry and his crew spotted Keith waiting on the rocks below. In such steep terrain, there weren't many places to safely put a helicopter down, but the rock gave Jerry just enough room to reach him. He maneuvered the helicopter into the canyon, landed long enough for Keith to climb aboard, and carried him out to safety. Once they were back on the ground,

Keith was handed over to a Forest Service employee who offered to help him get back to his truck. Once Keith was back in town, the Forest Service employee drove him to the home of his friend, Tandon Olson. Keith still needed to retrieve his truck, so Tandon agreed to drive him back towards where he had left it. On the drive, the two men talked about what had just happened. Keith had gone into the forest for hunting trip and ended up being rescued by a helicopter from a wildfire. But then Keith told Tandon something. he wasn't expecting. Keith said that the fire was his fault, that he had started it. Keith had just admitted to his friend that he was responsible for the fire burning behind them,

but at that point, there was a little indication of just how consequential that admission would become. Small wildfires were not unusual in this part of California, and for the local residents watching smoke rise from the National Forest, this initially looked like another fire that crews would be able to contain before it became anything extraordinary. Even as firefighters began responding, the fire remained relatively small during its first couple of days. But then, two days after the fire began, the winds shifted. The flames were pushed out of the canyon and into miles of dry forest beyond it, and in a single day, the fire nearly quadrupled in size.

As the fire grew, so did the response to it, and investigators began trying to be to determine exactly how it had started. Keith eventually admitted to authorities what he had already told Tandon that he was responsible. He explained that while hunting, he had stopped to make lunch and built a small fire in an existing fire ring to heat a can of soup. When he was finished, he buried the can and some other trash in the fire pit, but hot embers escaped and landed in the surrounding dry vegetation. The hillside caught fire and in the steep terrain, Keith said, there was nothing he could do to bring it back under control. By then, the consequences of that fire were becoming increasingly difficult to comprehend. The rim fire, as it was named,

was spreading across thousands of acres, jarring an enormous firefighting response and threatening communities and wilderness far beyond the canyon where it began. Eventually, it crossed into Yosemite National Park where it would burn more than 77,000 acres, roughly 10,000, percent of the entire park and the largest fire in Yosemite's recorded history at the time. The flames threatened the park's giant Sequoia groves and burn through areas around Hetch Hechi, Hodgian Meadow, and along Tioga Road. Before it was finally over, the rim fire would burn more than 257,000 acres in total, becoming the third largest wildfire in California's history at the time and causing more than $127 million in damages.

All for a can of soup. All for a can of soup. I hope it was a really good can of soup. And I don't want to speak to you soon because I don't know where this is going, but the feeling that I have right now is at least he owned up to it. Yeah, at least he's saying, hey, I did it. This happened. I'm sure they would have, through investigation, discovered the source.

and linked it to human error. For sure. But for him to come forward that early on and say, hey, that was my mess up, like my fuck up. Yeah. It takes, you got to commend him for that. I don't know. Yeah. And that was my thought too when I was first.

Okay. And see, I don't want to support him too much. No, I totally agree with you. I think that was my thought first. And then we get into the weeds of it and we'll talk about this. confession as we go. Oh, okay, okay. Yeah. This story is going to get really complicated and there's going to be a lot of views and questions of how this fire started and why it was handled the way it was. It goes beyond the soup. It goes way beyond the soup. Okay. All right. The infamous soup.

So of course, not long after Keith admitted to authorities that he had started this fire, he was arrested because you can't just start a, even if it's an accident, you can't just start. you can't just start a wildfire that decimates hundreds of thousands of acres. Someone's got to pay. 257,000, 77,000 in the forest or in the national park. So you can't just like walk away scot-free from that. And knowing all of this, it kind of seems like it's a pretty straightforward case. He admitted he started the fire.

He explained how it happened. And then he was arrested. But that information didn't become public nearly as quickly as the fire was spreading. While investigators were working behind the scenes, the people living in the path of the rim fire were watching this enormous disaster unfold without having many answers about how it started, why it had been allowed to grow so large, or what officials were doing to stop it. And those questions became increasingly urgent as the fire grew. Communities along Highway 120 were suddenly dealing with smoke, road closures, evacuation warnings, and the possibility that the

fire could reach their own homes. Groveland, a small historic town outside of the national forest and along one of the main routes into Yosemite, became one of the communities watching the fire particularly closely. People there were accustomed to living with wildfire risk, which was part of what made the rim fire so confusing. Small fires started in the surrounding forest all the time, and residents were used to seeing firefighters respond and put them out. This one had also started, so small, so people wanted to know why this particular fire had been able to escape the canyon and become so enormous. They were essentially like watching this all unfold and they're like, hey, is anyone going to do anything? What's going on? Why? We see fires all the time. Why is this one

getting so out of control and why aren't people taking care of it? But during those crucial first days, there wasn't a clear public explanation. The Forest Service would later acknowledge that that communication with the surrounding communities could have been much better, including holding more public meetings and giving residents more opportunities to ask questions and voice their concerns. Without that, though, people were left trying to piece together what was happening from whatever information that they could get. And in a small town, rumors begin to spread. It wasn't until nearly a week after the fire began that officials held a public meeting in Groveland. By then, the rim fire had become a major emergency, and the room was filled with people looking for answers.

But there was still no official determination of what had caused it, and Keith's admission had not yet become public. During that meeting, Twain Hart Fire Chief Todd McNeill offered one possibility. He told the crowd that the fire was highly suspected of having originated at an illegal marijuana grow site somewhere within the National Forest. It wasn't presented as this conclusion of a completed investigation, but in a community that was desperate for answers, this theory took hold. A legal marijuana cultivation on remote stretches of public land was a real problem in California. Law enforcement agencies had discovered large grow operations hidden inside national forests, sometimes containing thousands of plants, and raids on these sites were happening in this

particular region. So when residents heard that the rim fire might have begun at an illegal grow site, there was already enough truth surrounding that idea to make it feel plausible. And if you're familiar with or want to know more about weed in national parks, Cassie did a whole episode on it. I did. I titled it, Don't Grow Weed in National Parks. No, I think you said you can't grow weed. Oh, you're very firm about it. You can't do it. You can't do it. You've technically Like they will grow in national parks you good, but like you can't. It's super illegal. Yeah. So illegal. I think you shouldn't do that. That's a bad idea. And so bad for the environment. Yes. That was a huge thing I went into for that episode is just how much trash and like weird irrigation systems are put in and how detrimental these grow operations are to the environment.

but also how dangerous they are to just regular old people going for a hike because you can't see that stuff. You're going to stumble across some. Yeah, you can't know that stuff because there are some dangerous people behind those grows. So if you stumble on a grow, back away slowly and quietly. And don't be seen. Yeah, so this is now with this whole thing with the rim fire and this possible grow operation, there's, of course, a lot of lore and concern around this.

that. So people were really holding on to this idea that maybe it started because of an illegal grow. For a lot of locals, this explanation made a lot more sense than the idea that someone from the area had accidentally started it. It was kind of like no one from around here would do something like that. It has to be some crazy cartel activity that's happening. People who lived and hunted around the national forest understood how dry the forest was and how dangerous fire could be at that time of year. So the thought that a person local to the area could have started, the fire was outrageous.

It was like no one from around here would ever do that. The thinking was that a local hunter or someone recreating in that area would have known better. Someone illegally growing marijuana deep in the forest, on the other hand, became an easy explanation. Then footage from the Groveland meeting made its way onto YouTube. McNeil's speculation was separated from much of the uncertainty surrounding it and online. line, the distinction between highly suspected and this is what happened quickly began to disappear. Before long, the story circulating wasn't that investigators were considering an illegal marijuana

grow as a possible origin. It was that marijuana growers had started the rim fire. And of course, you know when things get on the internet. It's like wildfire. It sure, it's from there spread like wildfire. One version claimed the grow wasn't being operated by a few people hiding plants in the woods. It actually belonged to a Mexican drug cartel. According to the rumor, authorities had discovered the operation and the marijuana needed to be destroyed, leaving two options. Burn it where it was or put it through a wood chipper.

Somehow, the marijuana had been burned, the fire had escaped, and now the federal government was covering up the fact that its own actions had caused. one of the largest wildfires in California's history. So essentially people were saying, this is a DEA cover up. They went in, they fucked up, and they burned the forest down, and the DEA is trying to cover their tracks. The DEA is like, actually, it was a guy that was trying to cook dinner, and we have nothing to do with it. Yeah.

Well, at this point, no one even knows about Keith. They are not saying anything. The soup is not in the picture yet. The soup's not even the picture. people are just kind of like piecing together things and they're like, this is why they're being so hush, hush about it. This is why no one's told us the cause of the fire is because the DEA is involved. And I commend the, I don't want to say creativity because it's not creative. It's, you know, you're piecing all this different information together that, yeah, maybe, but I just find it so

interesting that it's not just like a, hey, maybe it's the government. It's like, no, this is what happened. And it's this whole sequence of events that someone just made up. But there's so many reasons. Yeah. And people are like, we know this happened. Yes. Yes.

It's like, who has the time? With no evidence. No. But, I mean, sometimes it is the government and you have to call it out first like that, you know. So. Yeah. You can't trust the government all the time. And it does feel governmenty.

No, but there were a lot of things that it will get into that show that this explanation is a little bit far-fetched. Like if you were to say, like if you were to say, yeah, it was an illegal grow operation and the cartel was involved and like something must have happened and they like burned their supply. Yeah. And it got out of hand. Okay. But you're bringing woodchippers involved are now. in the as like an option it's like where did that come from well i guess actually and this is funny because i did not know this i was the one in the research but woodchippers are used when confiscating

illegal grows as they'll put the weed plants through woodchippers oh so it can't be used and it's destroyed yeah it's rendered destroyed yeah yeah so people were like people with a lot of information people who come up with explanations it's like how do you know they do their research They're like, I had no evidence of this, but these are the things I know about the subject and why I'm connecting it. It's like I have a very particular, what is it? What's the Liam Neeson thing? He's like, I have a particular set of skills. Skills.

Well, with all of these rumors and stuff that were going around, there were even supposed witnesses. People claimed marijuana had been seen at the site, which seemed to offer confirmation that the story was true. And once again, there was just enough reality underneath the rumor to keep it alive. Federal and local law enforcement really had been conducting marijuana eradication operations in the surrounding area at the time. So people were like, it makes sense. Make sense. Nail in the coffin. We got it. We have all the evidence we need here. They really are here right now. We did it, Joe. Yeah. We got them. But authorities came in and were like, hey, that's, not really how this works. This whole story that you guys are coming up with is not really how we deal

with things. When marijuana plants were seized from illegal gross sites, DAA officers said that the contraband was removed and destroyed. They did not just set enormous piles of marijuana on fire, especially in the middle of a drought-stricken national forest. They would never, the DAA would never go in and light up a marijuana gross site. So they were like, that, um, Doesn't make any sense. And in this particular case, authority said that the plants had been removed from the grow site that they did find in the area. And it was put in a wood chipper at another location. So they're like, none of this makes any sense.

We didn't start any fires. We didn't even take care of the marijuana plants in this location. We pulled them and moved them. Good call on the wood chipper. But it. Everything else is wrong. But instead of disproving this rumor, the absence of evidence of what they were talking about, people interpreted it still as a DEA cover-up. There was actually someone who was so convinced that they were lying that they called around to local woodchipper rental places and asked if anyone had rented a woodchipper within the last several days or whatever.

and when the answer was no, that was like the evidence that they needed that they were lying and that this was a DA cover-up. Okay. They're like, this is suspicious. But the marijuana theory wasn't the only explanation that was circulating. In the absence of an official account of what had happened on Jawbone Ridge, people began looking at who else might have been in that remote canyon on August 17th. And that led them to another group that regularly traveled through the national forest, and that was rafters and kayakers. The Tawalami River is actually a major whitewater destination. Its wild and scenic stretch runs through a remote canyon west of Yosemite with rapids that attract commercial rafting trips and experience private boaters.

Because most of the surrounding country is difficult to reach by road, boaters were among the relatively small number of people who, regularly traveled through and camped in the canyon. On the night the rim fire began, there had been a large rafting group camping along the Tualami River. And that was enough for a whole other rumor to begin taking shape in the community and that was that this group of rafters had caused the fire. But one person in the rafting community had a very different understanding of what had happened. Marty McDonald, who owned Sierra Mac River Trips, a local rafting company that had been operating trips in the Tuolomee for years had a different view. His business was only about a quarter mile from where he could see the area around Jabone Ridge, putting him

close to the fire from its very beginning. Marty was actually one of the first people who reported the fire. On the afternoon of August 17th, he spotted the first wist of smoke rising from Jabone Ridge and called it in. From where he was, he could watch the response begin and he saw a helicopter fly into the canyon and pick someone up. At the time, he didn't know who that person was or why he had been down there. However, not long afterwards, Marty said a friend who worked for the Forest Service called him and told him what had happened. According to Marty, his friend said that the person rescued by the helicopter was a hunter and that the hunter had started the fire. Then that friend had called him back after reporting all this information to him. And this time, he told Mark

not to repeat anything that he had heard, and this was information that was to stay between the two of them. According to Marty, information about how the fire had started was being kept quiet because officials were worried about what might happen if his identity became public while people were watching the rim fire destroy enormous amounts of forests around them. Marty later explained, quote, The Forest Service was protecting the guy because they were worried if news got out. of who had started it, then someone would just go kill him. Because people at this point were losing their homes. People are really upset. The whole forest is on fire. There's evacuations. And people in the community were really upset. So he said it was to protect this guy from locals trying to kill him. Whether or not everyone involved would characterize the decision that way, it helps explain

this strange position that Marty found himself in after finding out this information. He knew what had happened. Meanwhile, outside of this small circle of people who knew his whole community was trying to figure it out. And with the lack of information, a lot of people were blaming other people within the community. And Marty's just sitting on this information while they're blaming illegal grows and now they're blaming the rafting community that he is part of as this. And he's like, okay, I'm supposed to stay silent while all of this is happening. I kind of know what happened. but I'm supposed to say silent while everyone's blaming rafting community. I don't love that.

It's like a witch hunt. Yeah. Yeah. So he's in a really hard position. And the view of the locals around them and how they concluded that it had to be rafters was that there's no one who goes this far in the canyon. It's like I mentioned before, it's super remote. So the only people who are there are either rafters and kayakers or hunters.

And because there had been a rafting group there at the time, it was just assumed people kind of didn't blame hunters. And part of that was because local hunters didn't believe that a hunter could be responsible for this. It was basically like hunters know the forest really well. They're respectful. They know this area. A hunter would never do that. And Marty actually said that the attitude of the community was, no, it couldn't be a hunter. it had to be a tree hugger type.

So it was like this weird rift between more of like hippie, like free loving people versus hunters. People were basically just trying to point fingers at the people who weren't them, essentially. Yeah, like it can't be from my side of the street because of X, Y, and Z. We would never. But I just, my first thought is, okay, but everybody is a human, I think, involved in this. And people make mistakes, no matter what. group you associate with.

I have a feeling it wasn't a mistake. I don't know what's happening or about to happen. But if it was just the soup thing, like, people make mistakes and it's awful and it sucks. It's like everyone makes mistakes. Everybody has mistakes. Everyone has those days. Yeah. What is that from?

I don't know because I'm also in my mind having, when you've heard, see, you said rumors like a hundred times throughout this episode. so far. And Lindsay Lowen. I'm sick of being followed. I'm talking of people talking. I pray that you've set that song as this social media post. Please, I'm begging you. But no, to answer your question, I don't know what that other.

What was it again? But you know what the song I'm talking about. I have to look at that. Say it again. Everybody has those days. Everyone makes mistakes. Everybody has their mistakes. It has that.

Is it Hillary Duff? I feel like it is. It's Hannah Montana. Oh, nobody. God. Close enough. Yeah. Oh, goodness.

Okay, sorry. But yeah, so going back to that conversation, I understand having a lot of pride in your group of being responsible outdoorsmen and that the likelihood of something like that happening being very low. but to just be like, no. I speak for everybody in this group in this community and there's no way it could be us. They would never. A little far-fetched, but. Yeah. I don't know if I'd have that confidence to say that.

No. You know, I see like part of it because, like, I don't know. If there was a wildfire and someone was blaming you or like my parents or like Al or something like that, I would be like, no. It would never. And then if it like turned out to be you, I would be shocked. You know, so like I get it. But to like say like a whole community of people, like I wouldn't be like,

Vermonters would never, you know, like if someone in Vermont started a fire. So I get kind to see it. But also I think people just don't want it to be their own community. They don't want it. It makes you look bad. Yeah, no one wants to take the blame for that. You know, it's not a good look. It is not.

But with all of this going on, as soon people were approaching Marty and demanding to know who had been rafting on the river that day. Because they wanted names. They were out for, they were basically, the community was kind of out for blood. They're like, the government isn't telling us what's going on. We know it was rafters. Give us the list of people who had been renting through your company or who had gone out on this guided trip. We need to know who was there and we need to know who started it. So wanting to stop the finger pointing in the wrong direction, he actually was like, I have to tell people what I know.

And he told people that it was, yeah, he did. He was like, we're not pointing at people in my community when I know it wasn't. So he told people that it was a hunter that started the fire. But no one believed him. They were like, that's, that can't be true. So you're just saying that because you're trying to deflect. From your community who did this. essentially, yeah. So you can kind of see like how this is getting really confusing because, and a lot of this is lack of information from the government who has decided not to say anything. So now people are really pointing the pictures.

Isn't that just how it goes? It sure is. You know, with lack of information, you fill in the, our minds want answers. They fill in the blanks. And it's just human nature to do that. And it's super dangerous. And that's why. I think lack of communication is just one of the worst things. And I know there's a myriad of reasons of why sometimes details aren't given. But I think by and large, it's just a super bad recipe for disaster because it can make things so much worse. Totally. And now you have people out with pitchforks trying to figure out who did this because you have the one group that believes it was a marijuana operation that had started the fire. And now you have this other group that thinks it's the rafters. But others were becoming convinced that the federal government knew exactly what had happened, and they were deliberately hiding it.

So now people are also getting very distrustful of the government. In a different way. Yeah, in a different way. And pieces of real information existed along with every version of the story, you know, that was happening, like where the fire was spreading, when it started, things like that. but without officials publicly explaining what the investigators already knew, those pieces were being rearranged into all these different versions. So while the actual fire continued burning across the Sierra Nevada, another kind of wildfire was spreading through the communities around it. And that was the rumors of who was responsible, why the truth was supposedly being hidden, and what else the government might not be telling them. And eventually, the rumors moved beyond the question of who had started the rim fire, because people also wanted to know why once it had started, the Forest Service hadn't been able to stop it.

One explanation that began circulating was that firefighters had essentially been forced to fight with one hand tied behind their backs. The Tualmi River had been designated a wild and scenic river in the 1980s, a federal protection intended to preserve certain fruits. free-flowing rivers and their surrounding environments. Some people in the area had opposed those protections for years, believing federal regulations placed too many restrictions on how the surrounding land could be used and managed. Now, as the rim fire burned through the canyon, an old frustration became attached to a new rumor. And that was that the Forest Service hadn't been allowed to drop fire retardant near the Tuolomey because of its wild and scenic designation. So again, information's not getting past to these people.

People are assuming things because that was not true at all. Aircrafts were heavily involved in fighting the rim fire. By September 1st, roughly two weeks into the incident, Cruz had already dropped about 1.7 million gallons of fire retardant and another 1.4 million gallons of water. Just a few days later, the amount of retardant dropped had climbed to approximately 2.3 million gallons. air tankers, including massive DC-10s, were being used to lay retardant ahead of the fire's path.

So if regulations weren't preventing firefighters from attacking the fire, why couldn't thousands of firefighters, engines, bulldozers, helicopters, and air tankers put it out? The answer had much more to do with the forest. The fire was burning through and the conditions that existed there long before August 17th. For more than a century, the United States had largely approached wildfires as something that needed to be extinguished. The policy protected communities and valuable timber in the short term, but in many forests that had historically experienced frequent lower intensity fires, it also interrupted a natural process. Smaller fires that once burned through grasses, brush, fallen branches, and young trees were repeatedly suppressed. Over time, in some areas, that allowed vegetation and dead material to accumulate and forests to become denser.

Then, of course, came the drought. The winter of 2012 into 2013 was amongst the driest California had experienced, and the rim fire began during the second consecutive year of a significant drought in the Sierra Nevada. When the fire reached those extremely dry fuels, it was capable of producing the kind of extreme fire, behavior that made direct suppression extraordinarily difficult. And there is an important piece of evidence from the rim fire that shows how much previous forest management could matter. When the fire eventually crossed into portions of Yosemite, that had undergone years of prescribed burning and fuel reduction, researchers found that those previously treated forests generally

experienced less severe fire effects. Around Hodgton Meadow, the National Park Service reported that the Rural and fire actually moved around some previously treated areas where surface fuels had been reduced and the forest canopy was more open. So the argument over forest management wasn't entirely invented by conspiracy theorists. There was and still is a legitimate debate over how forests like this one should be managed and how prescribed fire, thinning, logging, and other treatments should be used. So it's like essentially they have a real life example of Yosemite. You have a 70 that's being managed and it burned way less and was way more manageable versus this one that is in the

national forest that is just absolutely out of control. Because by the time the rim fire made its major run, firefighters were confronting an enormous amount of dry fuel, extreme terrain, and weather capable of pushing fire faster than crews could safely build containment lines. Incident reports described both the growth potential and terrain difficulty as extreme, and warned that embers could travel far enough ahead of the main fire to ignite new fires beyond the retardant lines. At its height, more than 5,000 firefighters were working the incident. Ultimately, the fire burned 257,314 acres, more than 402 square miles of the Sierra Nevada. It destroyed 11 homes, three commercial buildings, and 98 other structures, injured 10 people, and cost more than 127 million just to suppress it.

The losses to ranchers, businesses, watersheds, and the surrounding communities went far beyond that number. Sean Crook's family ranch was among the properties caught in the fire. More than 500 acres of that ranch burned, along with fencing, grazing land, and around 100, cattle. The losses ran into the millions, but for Sean, the damage wasn't only financial. This was land he had grown up on. After the fire, looking across hundreds of acres that had been transformed in a matter of hours, he realized that his children would never know the ranch exactly as he had known it. Still, Sean didn't primarily blame Keith Emerald for what had happened. He blamed the federal government. In his view, decades of restrictions on logging and grazing

had allowed the national forest to become dangerously overgrown, creating the fuel that turned a small fire into a catastrophe. His position was summed up by the green baseball cap he wore, bearing the words, log it, graze it, or watch it burn. Or just, we could just rake up everything. Just sweep the floor. Just rake the forest and we're good. It's easy. Obviously, yeah. Obviously.

Vacuum. And there was another reason that Sean had difficulty accepting the government's version of events. And at this point, the government does eventually come out and give Keith's name, especially as it started circulating through the community. So his name does get released. But for Sean, who had just lost his whole ranch, he had a hard time accepting the government saying this because he actually knew Keith. Keith had grown up in the area. His family had been there for generations. and Sean had grown up around him.

Keith was the same age as Sean's brother, and to Sean, the idea that someone who knew these mountains and understood how dry they became in August would build a fire out there didn't make sense. And he basically said, Keith would have known better. He didn't do this, or he couldn't do this. So even when authorities did eventually name Keith

as the man responsible, he remained skeptical. Maybe Keith had been framed, maybe the government needed someone to blame, and even if Keith really had started it, Sean believed that only explained the spark. It didn't explain why that spark had been able to consume more than a quarter million acres. To him, that responsibility still belonged to the Forest Service. And by this point, the anchor surrounding the rim fire wasn't difficult to understand. For the people living in Tualaum County, it had burned through ranches and private timberland, destroyed those 11 homes, three commercial buildings, and dozens of other structures,

and left ranchers trying to account for cattle that had been killed or scattered across thousands of burned acres. Miles of fencing were damaged, grazing lands were gone, timber had burned, and buildings and equipment that families depended on for their livelihoods had been destroyed. The losses to the local ranching community alone were expected to reach into the millions. And even for the people whose houses were still standing, the landscape around them had been completely transformed. Families who had lived and worked on the same land for generations were looking out at blackened pastures, dead livestock, and forests that would take decades to resemble what

it had been before. So as rumors continued circulating about who had started the fire, the question of responsibility became deeply personal. One Tawalami County rancher, who did. didn't give his name publicly, admitted that he didn't want to believe someone local could have done something so careless. But after everything, he and his neighbors had lost, he also couldn't ignore how angry he had become. Speaking about whoever was responsible for starting the fire, he admitted, quote, the loss in her is so big, I'd shoot that sucker. I mean, when you

lose everything or witness your entire community lose, you know, their livelihoods and everything they've worked for and their futures, or at least the foreseeable future. It's hard to grapple with. And over something so silly and preventable. Violence is never the answer. But I can understand the frustration. I mean, I've said a lot of things in frustration. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, this, these kind of comments, like I'd shoot him and stuff, was exactly the kind of anger that Keith was afraid of. Of course, with his name being out there, he's like, my life is kind of on the line here. Six days after the rimfire began, federal investigators interviewed him about what had happened on Jawbone Ridge. But instead of telling them the same story, he had apparently told his friend Tandon immediately after his rescue, Keith gave them a very different. explanation. He said that while moving across the steep hillside, he had slipped and caused a rock slide. According to Keith, a large boulder rolled downhill, striking other rocks as it went, and he believed those collisions had somehow created a spark that ignited the dry vegetation. He told investigators that several minutes later, he smelled smoke. Investigators went back to the area where the rim fire had started to see whether that explanation was actually possible. They examined the origin and looked at the rocks and conditions there,

but what they found didn't support Keith's story. Investigators concluded that the specific conditions necessary for rocks to create the kind of spark capable of igniting the vegetation weren't present, and they found no evidence that a rock slide had started the fire. So when they came back and asked Keith about it again, his explanation changed. As rumors about illegal marijuana, operations circled through the community, and Keith had heard these rumors, Keith suggested that perhaps marijuana growers had been responsible. He told investigators that grow operations existed in the area and wondered whether growers might have seen him moving through the forest in camouflage, mistaken him for law enforcement, and started a fire near their crop. But investigators couldn't

find evidence supporting that explanation either. There was no marijuana grow at the fire's point of origin, and now Keith had offered investigators two different explanations for a fire he had initially told his friend, and he did tell the investigators that he had started himself. The changing stories made investigators increasingly suspicious. They told Keith that what they were finding didn't match what he was telling them, but they also made an important distinction. If this had genuinely been an accident, they told him that criminal charges or severe civil penalties were unlikely. What concerned them was the possibility that he was continuing to lie about what had happened. So, like, hey, if this was truly an accident, we're just doing an investigation here. You're not going to be

persecuted for this, but we really, we need to know what happened here. But Keith's fear wasn't necessarily limited to what might happen in a courtroom. He knew the people who lived there. He had grown up among them and hearing these same rumors and how angry. great people were and how desperate they were to identify someone responsible, he was really worried to point to himself. But eventually, Keith told investigators his concerns that he was worried about retaliation, and he eventually signed a written statement admitting that his campfire had started the rim fire. He reportedly asked investigators whether they could keep his name out of the media until the snow fell or the winter when the immediate danger and anger surrounding the fire might have

subsided. So he's like, hey, I did do it, but please don't tell anyone until the fire's out and people kind of cool off a little bit. Eventually, he confessed. In a statement given under oath and on video, he returned to the story he had apparently told immediately after the fire had began. He said he had built a small fire using pine needles so he could heat up his lunch and afterwards had put his soup can and some trash into the fire pit. According to Keith, hot embers escaped, blew uphill into the dry vegetation, and started a fire that he couldn't get back under control. But by then, investigators had also documented all of the other explanations that Keith had given them. In August 2014, almost exactly a year after the rim fire began, a federal grand jury indicted him on four counts

related to starting the fire and allegedly lying to investigators. Keith pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court in Fresno and was released on a $60,000 bond while he waited for his case to go to trial. If convicted, Keith faced years in federal prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. His defense attorneys were also challenging one of the most important pieces of evidence against him. That was his confession. They argued that investigators had coerced him into it and wanted to have it thrown out. That made the other witnesses in the case incredibly important. Two men in particular could place Keith at the center of what was happening during those first hours of the rim fire. One was his friend Tandon Olson, the man who had

driven Keith back to his truck after his helicopter rescue, and who investigators said could testify about his interactions with Keith immediately afterwards. The other was Gerald Jerry Bonner, the helicopter pilot involved in Keith's rescue near the fire's point of origin, who prosecutors expected to testify about the discovery of the fire, the rescue, and the communication surrounding those first critical moments.

Both men were expected to become important witnesses when Keith's case went before a jury. Neither one of them would live long enough to testify. against him. On February 2nd, 2015, 34-year-old Tandon Olson was at work on a construction project near Tiger Creek in Amador County, California. He worked for Sierra Mountain Construction, which was doing work connected to the Amador Water Agency's Gravity Supply Line project. That day, Tandon was operating a man lift along a gravel access road when something went terribly wrong. Tandon was working alone when the machinery apparently got too close to the edge of the road and went over a steep

embankment. The lift and Tandon tumbled roughly 60 feet down the slope and into a water canal below. Because he was alone, no one saw it happen. About an hour past before his coworkers realized he was missing and went looking for him. When they found him, rescuers faced the added problem of reaching him inside the canal. Water flow had been reduced so Cruz could safely get down to Tandon and pull him out. He was alive but badly injured. Tandon was airlifted to Sutter Roseville Medical Center where he remained for more than two weeks. He never recovered from his injuries. On February 18th, 16 days after the incident, Tandon died. He was just 34 years old. His death was attributed to cardiopulmonary arrest caused by blunt force trauma he had suffered in the fall, and authority

said there was no evidence of foul play. For prosecutors, preparing their case against Keith, they had suddenly lost one of the people who could tell a jury what Keith had said and done immediately after the rim fire began. Then, just over two weeks later, another tragedy devastated their case. Jerry Bonner was 72 years old, but he was still working as a helicopter pilot. On March 6, 2015, Jerry was on duty at Alma Helatack Base in Santa Clara County. At around 9 that morning, he was found. unresponsive inside his barracks. Jerry had suffered a heart attack and died there at the base. His death was officially classified as a cardiac-related on-duty fatality. Within the span of just 16 days,

two men connected to the earliest moments of the rimfire had died in completely unrelated deaths. Prosecutors needed to take them to stand and tell a jury what they personally knew. Keith had the right to have his attorneys question the witnesses against him, and with both men dead before trial, that could no longer happen. Prosecutors later acknowledged that statements from the two men were now inadmissible hearsay and couldn't be read to the jury in their absence. Because of this, in May of 2015, the case was dismissed without prejudice, meaning the government technically retained the ability to charge Keith again, but for the time being, the criminal case against the man accused of starting one of the largest wildfires in California's history was over.

And around Toalamy County, you can probably imagine what happened next. After nearly two years of rumors about marijuana growers, rafters, government cover-ups, and whether Keith had been framed, two important witnesses had died unexpectedly within weeks of another and then the government dropped the charges. There was no evidence that either death was anything other than tragic events, but for the people who already distrusted the official story, the timing gave them one more coincidence to pick apart. It's like all of this happened were suspicious and now the two only witnesses died right before the trial. Yeah, it's not great. It's not a great look. And it could have been, I mean, accidents happen, medical emergencies happen.

It's not out of the realm of possibility, but it's just such suspicious timing. There are two people who don't believe in coincidences. It's quite the coincidence that this happened. And there is a book about this, and B.J. Hansen, who is the author. He later wrote California's Room Fire Behind the Headlines. He offered another theory about why the deaths may have made dropping the case attractive to the federal government. Hanson anonymously interviewed members of Keith's defense team and learned that if the case had gone to trial, they intended to put the Forest Service Management of the National Forest on trial right alongside Keith.

They planned to argue that whatever happened on Jawbone Ridge was only the ignition and that decades of federal forest management decisions had created the conditions that allowed one small fire to become a quarter million acre disaster. I see. The defense intended to raise questions about fuel accumulation, fire suppression, logging restrictions, and the Forest Service initial response to the rimfire. According to the theory presented in Hansen's book, the death of Tandon and Jerry gave prosecutors

a legitimate reason to abandon the case that could have otherwise forced those questions in open court. So it was kind of like, for the government, it was a win. Yeah, because they're like, we're off the hot seat here. Yeah, we would have been under fire in this prosecution. Yeah, totally. Still, the rim fire had raised a question that California would be forced to confront again and again in the years that followed. How could one small ignition become a fire this enormous?

At more than 257,000 acres, the rim fire was the third largest wildfire in recorded California history at the time. But only seven years later, it would be dwarfed by the August complex. In 2020, dozens of fires sparked by lightning across northern California eventually merged, and burned more than one million acres, becoming the first recorded California wildfire to cross that threshold. And unlike the rim fire, there was no person to blame for starting it. Lightning had provided the spark. But interestingly, that's not how most wildfires in the United States begin. Around 85% of wildfires nationwide are caused by people. Most are accidents or the result of human activity, campfires that aren't completely extinguished, debris burn, that escape sparks from vehicles and equipment, disregarded cigarettes, fireworks, power lines,

and other everyday activities that introduce a spark into dry vegetation. Arson accounts for some human-caused fires as well. One analysis of more than 1.5 million wildfires found that humans were responsible for 84% of fires, but those fires accounted for only 44% of the total acreage burned. Lightning fires, while far less common, can become enormous because they often ignite in remote places where they aren't immediately detected or easily reached by firefighters. That doesn't mean there aren't human decisions that influence how destructive a wildfire can ultimately become. Questions about forest management, prescribed burning, development in fire prone areas, and a hotter, drier climate have only become more urgent since 2013. But those questions are much harder to answer than identifying who lit the first flame. After the case against Keith ended, he eventually left Wallamie County, but he didn't stop talking about the Rimfire.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, he offered yet another version of what had happened and argued that the federal government had made him a scapegoat. Keith maintained that investigators had coerced him into confessing, something his defense attorneys had also argued in court. They claimed federal investigators had threatened him with more serious charges while promising that if he admitted the fire had been an accident, he wouldn't be prosecuted. Keith now insisted that his confession about heating the soup wasn't the truth at all. He also claimed that he had taken a photograph showing rafters camping near the fire's point of origin and said the government dropped its case after he finally produced it. According to Keith, he had deliberately withheld the photograph because he wanted to expose what he believed was corruption within the investigation. He accused the Forest Service of knowing that the area had been poorly managed and needed someone else to take their responsibility when it burned. And despite everything, we heard about his fear of how his community would react, Keith was now in this interview publicly defiant, saying, quote,

If a bunch of hippies think I started it, I couldn't care less. But Keith's later account didn't erase everything investigators had collected against him. There was his signed confession, the changing explanations he'd given investigators, his presence near the point of origin, and the fact that he had been rescued from the canyon shortly after the fire began. Federal prosecutors had maintained that they dropped the charges because of the unexpected deaths of Tandon Olson and Jerry Bonner, left them unable to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt, not because Keith had produced evidence clearing himself. And Keith continued trying to clear his name.

In 2017, he went back to court seeking to have the remaining record of the case cleared, but his request was denied after the Forest Service submitted more than 100 pages of material from its investigation. So legally, the story of the RIMFIRE ended without a verdict. And maybe that's part of the RIMFIRE that extends, beyond Keith Emerald. After a catastrophe this enormous, people understandably want an explanation, and often they want someone to hold responsible. But grief doesn't always come with one satisfying person to blame. Eventually, the work of rebuilding had to begin. In Tuolome County, roads, bridges, and culverts damaged or threatened by the fire were inspected and repaired, while property owners

faced the much more personal work of rebuilding homes, replacing fences, restorations, restorations, and grazing lands and figuring out what could be salvaged from properties that had been in their families for generations. There was also a new threat to prepare for. With so much vegetation gone, winter rains could send mud, debris, and ash running down the burned hillsides. The forest required an enormous recovery effort. The forest service repair drainage systems and hundreds of miles of road removed dangerous burn trees along nearly 200 miles of roads and recreation areas, rebuilt more than 30 miles of grazing fences, and replaced livestock water troughs destroyed in the fire.

Crews spread mulch across thousands of acres of severely burned ground to protect exposed soil from erosion, while longer-term recovery plans included reforestation and reducing the huge amount of dead fuel the fire had left behind. But the rim fire also gave fire managers an officer, opportunity to see on an enormous scale what had worked before the fire arrived. As I mentioned before in Yosemite, they were doing prescribed burning. The flames that had reached Hodgian Meadow, an area where managers had spent years

thinning vegetation and deliberately setting prescribed fires to reduce fuel. When the rimp fire reached those treated forests, it generally burned less severely and even moved around some of them. Despite the enormous fire surrounding it, no structures were lost at Hodgton Meadow. It reinforced something fire managers had already began to understand. In forests that evolved with frequent fire, eliminating fire entirely could create its own problems. Today, Yosemite uses a combination of prescribed burns, mechanical thinning, and under the right conditions, allowing some naturally ignited fires to burn for the benefit of the landscape.

The park has continued expanding that work, using fire not as something to fight, but as a pool for creating forests that have a better chance of surviving the next big one. And there will be a next one. The Sierra Nevada is a landscape shaped by fire and the rim fire has now become part of that landscape's history. Trees are growing again. Vegetation has returned to burned hillsides and areas that burned in 2013 may actually help slow future fires because they no longer contained the same continuous fuels they once did. Yosemite has even incorporated the RIMS fire footprint into later fire management planning, recognizing that recently burned areas can help create a more resilient landscape.

For the people of Tuala County, the fire eventually went out. But the arguments over who was responsible for everything the RIM fire took from them never really did. And that is my story of the RIM fire. Wow. Well done. Thank you. I can understand what you were trying to explain the beginning that it's very complex and lots of pointing fingers, but yeah, like no resolution, right? It's just kind of, it is what it is. No one was really held accountable. And I think some big lessons that can just come from this one is that people who are living in fire areas and who are having. their backyards and their homes and things destroyed by fires deserve communication and to know what happens and to just tell to be honest with what's happening. I mean, these are people's lives who are affected and not to like, not to say you have to point fingers at people, but

for this in particular, there were so much unnecessary rumors and stress and anxiety surrounding the whole community because the government wasn't honest. Well, not only to have answers, but to better prepare for the future. How are you supposed to do better if you don't know what happened? You know, you need that information. So that's a big chunk of it. And also, I couldn't help but be thinking this whole time you're talking about fire and management and all of that. But I don't know if this is from an episode you did on the podcast, a bonus episode you did,

the talk we were at at the Granite Park, Shillai, or just a personal conversation. We talked about fire a lot. But just the history of indigenous fire management and practices and how they just need to be more integrated into fire management in the present and how, you know, we kind of messed up a lot by seeing what the indigenous. cultures we're doing and pivoting completely and saying, no, we're not doing that. We're going to do something completely different. I'm pretty sure, wasn't it? Who was the, he was the guy who was doing

the talk at the chalet because he was talking about the trapper fire. I could have sworn he was talking about. Maybe I might have mentioned it in the episode too, but historically speaking, indigenous communities have always done prescribed burns and they've always managed forests. And And when there's this misconception that when settlers got here, they saw this pristine, amazing landscape that they were like, wow, untouched. But that's so untouched because they were being cared for and stewarded by indigenous communities. And when settlers realized that indigenous communities were using fire practices, they were appalled. They basically said, oh, my God, why would you burn this?

That's horrible. We can't have fires. This is a beautiful landscape and they shut it all down. And they said no. And then over the years, as I kind of mentioned in this episode, without that fire suppress, there was so much fire suppression that all of this kindling basically just grew. Piled up. Piled up.

And you have all these saplings and all these things that are really prone to fire that weren't there before because the forests were being taken care of better. And now some of these fires, I mean, there's a lot of reasons we're seeing these really big fires right now. But in part, it is because there's been so much fire suppression. But of course, now we're seeing extreme droughts and temperatures are rising. And I mean, the West is just absolutely on fire this year. And it's a, it's pretty scary. Yeah, it's just awful because I feel like over the last, gosh, at least over the last.

gosh, at least over the last five years, I want to say, every single summer. It's been like that. Yeah. And I know some summers are worse than others, but just, and maybe it's like a, I know it's, the trend is worsening, but just as a personal experience being an east coaster for most of my life, I didn't get a taste of that until I moved out west after college, you know, in my 20s. I didn't know, you know, but since then, since 2014, when I first got personal experience living in the West, from then to now, even in my very short amount of personal experience, just witnessing it gets so much worse.

Yeah. Yeah, even on the East Coast, I mean, we never grew up with fire smoke. I cannot remember a single time in my childhood. there was ever smoke in the skies here. And now every single summer, I would say for the past at least four years, we have, and I mean, this is nothing in comparison to the West still. However, every single year, we now have a fire smoke and we have like the fire sunsets and things that have never been a thing here. And it happens for, I would say, probably about a week every summer. Yeah. Which is very, very different. And when I was spending,

time out west this summer. I mean, I saw a lot of fire and Al, of course, has been working in fire for over a decade and he is saying how bad this year is and how different it is. I mean, he's always been on the front lines of fires and it just feels a lot different this year. Yeah. Well, rim fire, no accountability, but it's like, yeah, I wonder, not that. It really, I mean, just for pure curiosity, what do you think transpired that day? I mean, my thought is that he did have this fire that was there. It was the first thing he said. It was the first thing you told someone.

My thought is that he did. He saw an old fire pit and he was like, sure, it's a fire pit. It's safe. He heated up his soup, thought it would be fine and it wasn't fine. And then it got out of control. And it feels like, it feels like to me that he was feeding off of the rumors because everything he said later, all of the stories he accounted for later and excuses later, were all things that the towns were talking about. Yeah. It's kind of like.

Yeah. He was like, oh, yeah, I messed up. But there's all these other really good thoughts of like, oh, this could have happened. This could fit. It's like planning some doubt in. Yeah. in his responsibility. And I think at the end of the day, there was, I mean, they did have, it wasn't a full on fire ban, but they were saying you can only have fires in established campgrounds,

in established fire pits. And he was way out in the backcountry. He was not in an established area. And he shouldn't have, he shouldn't have had a fire at all. And because of that, people lost their homes, people lost businesses, people lost their livelihoods. And I think that because of that someone needs to be held accountable in some way. But I do think on the other end of that, I think that he needs to have some accountability. But I also think that there's a really valid argument for the National Forest Service re-looking at how they're treating their fire management and re-looking at why this was able to get out of control. And I think that that was a perfectly valid argument for people to, I don't think there was like one specific person to blame. I think

that it was a combination and everyone had kind of fair points here. And it's something where it doesn't have to be like, point the finger, blame someone. It's more of kind of what you said earlier of how are we going to do better if we don't learn the truth of what's happening and move forward from it. And how do we prevent this from happening again in the future? Yeah, you know, it's awful. It had to happen, but it's the perfect time to reevaluate our current practices and maybe make some adjustment. adjustments and modifications so we don't have to deal with something like this in the future. And it's just, it's really disheartening that that opportunity isn't taking advantage of because people are so caught up and worried about getting the blame in the present moment. They're like, no, no,

no, no, let's just, you know, I don't, don't put the spotlight on me. I don't want to do this, whatever. And it's like, just take some responsibility and let's move forward. Like, it's a fuck up, it's a mess up. Clearly, this isn't working. We need to reevaluate some things and go forward. It's like I know it sucks and it's awful and no one wants to be in the wrong. But to double down and to just shun things and I don't know. I'm talking in circles at this point. But yeah, it's just unfortunate because it happens all the time in different arenas too. It's not just with fire.

It's just like pick a problem. And it feels like this cycle is so applicable to that. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. But anyhow who, well, if you want more fire, episodes. We have so many. Cassie, just off the top of my head, just as like maybe a little bit of a not a pallet cleanser, but just like to, you know, lighten the mood a little bit. But Cassie is done. Let me see if I can get them all. Smoky origin story. Smoky the bear. That was fun.

The Pulaski. Oh, yeah. In Idaho. That's a crazy story. Idaho Panhandle National Forest, question mark. Sounds familiar. Or, Maybe I made that up, but it's definitely the Pulaski story. The Trapper Fire, which is a Patreon episode. Yep. Glacier National Park. Yeah. Granite Park Shillet almost burned down.

The one recently about the incarcerated women fighting fires. Yep. That's four. I feel like there's more, but. I feel like there's more, too, but I'm also blanking on them. Yeah. I don't know. the fire episodes. Yeah, it's just kind of, well, the one of a smoky bear was cool, not only because,

or was it the plastic one, I don't know, when Al came on. That was the smoky bear one. Okay. Yeah, Al came on at the last like 20 minutes or so to talk about fire from his perspective. And it was fun. That was fun. Yeah, he asked to come on this one too. Oh. Why is it? Oh, because he's working. He's not even here. He's not even here. I'm like, where are you going to record with me? But he's like, can I come on that one, I was like, uh, maybe another time. Next fire one. There will be one. There will be another fire one for sure. Okay. Well, thank you everyone for listening. We will see you next week. In the meantime, enjoy the view. Go watch your back. Bye. Bye.

Thanks for joining us for another episode. We hope you learn something new and have another location to put on your list. If you want more MPAD content, make sure to follow along with our adventures on all socials at National Park After Dark. For more stories just like this one, with the added bonus of exclusive content, you can join us on Patreon or Apple subscriptions. If you prefer to watch our episodes, head over to our YouTube channel. And if you're enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe on your favorite listening platform.