SPOKANE – A crew boss in the deadly 2001 Thirtymile wildfire that killed four U.S. Forest Service firefighters has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and lying to investigators, a federal prosecutor said Wednesday.
Federal prosecutors filed the charges Tuesday in U.S. District Court against Ellreese N. Daniels, who was in charge of the firefighters who died July 10, 2001, in the fire near Winthrop.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Hopkins said Daniels has not been arrested. He will be summoned to a Jan. 4 court appearance on four counts of involuntary manslaughter and seven counts of making a false statement during investigations into the fire.
Firefighters Tom Craven, 30; Devin Weaver, 21; Jessica Johnson, 19; and Karen FitzPatrick, 18, died when the fire raged out of control and swept over them as they deployed their fire shelters in the remote Chewuch River Canyon in north-central Washington. The victims were all from central Washington.
Daniels, who is a seasonal Forest Service employee in East Wenatchee, is no longer a firefighter. He has an unpublished telephone number and could not immediately be reached for comment.
“We intend to vigorously defend Mr. Daniels of these charges. We believe that they have no merit,” said his lawyer, federal defender Tina Hunt of Spokane. “It’s appalling that the government would single out one firefighter to blame the deaths of these firefighters on. This is not a case that belongs in the criminal justice system.”
Hopkins said Daniels is accused of gross negligence in the firefighters’ deaths for failing to order them out of harm’s way as flames advanced and then making false statements to Forest Service and Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigators.
The false statements Daniels allegedly made involved whether he contacted fire engine crews when they arrived at the scene, whether he ordered the firefighters to come down from the rocky slope and whether he told a Forest Service employee to take two civilians into her emergency shelter, Hopkins said.
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