Court documents reveal potential scope of equipment thefts

WENATCHEE, Wash. (AP) - A Washington state fire department outfitted a dozen or more fire trucks with equipment stolen from the U.S. Forest Service, taking some of the equipment while on duty in Yellowstone National Park during the 1988 fires, court documents allege.

The U.S. attorney's office in Spokane said Wednesday it will be months before an investigation is concluded and it decides whether criminal charges are filed against the district or its employees.

However, a copy of an affidavit that prompted a judge to issue search warrants for all 13 stations of the Chelan County Fire District No. 1 last September gives some indication of the scope of the alleged thefts.

The affidavit includes statements from former and current firefighters who said they had been ordered by their superiors to steal firefighting equipment and grind off identifying marks.

Another U.S. District Court document lists 123 pages of items found at fire stations that could be government property. The items were seized by federal agents, although nothing was taken from fire trucks that would jeopardize their ability to fight fires.

Seized items include 7,200 feet of fire hose, tarpaulins, portable water tanks, and assorted pairs of pants and shirts made of Nomex fire-retardant material. Many had U.S. Forest Service or other federal agency markings obscured.

District 1 commissioners declined to comment. Fire Chief Rick West, who has been on disability leave since Nov. 30, did not return phone calls for comment.

Here are some of the allegations contained in the court papers:

A firefighter told investigators "that whenever CCFD No. 1 purchases a new fire truck, they do not need to purchase all the associated equipment (except hose sometimes) because they use stolen Forest Service equipment to outfit their vehicles. He advised that the CCFD No. 1 has put together approximately 12 trucks in the last five or six years and they have not had to purchase anything except booster hose and mounted pumps and tanks."

The firefighter "stated that the majority of equipment on CCFD No. 1's brush trucks is Forest Service property," the documents indicated.

After the 1988 Yellowstone fires, four or five Mark III pumps "just showed up," even though the district had never purchased that model. After the 1994 Rat Creek Fire, the fire district ended up with boxes of sleeping bags and cases of batteries.

A former firefighter said that District 1 firefighters went to a fire in Libby, Mont., in 1994 and returned with excess equipment that had been hidden at camp to avoid detection. The firefighter said he was once asked to mark an orange 1,000-gallon portable tank with "CCFD No. 1" and put it on one of the district's water tenders.

Another former District 1 official said he and another fire official returned a full pickup load of stolen material to a Forest Service supply area at Pangborn Memorial Airport. The official said West admonished them for returning the equipment.

A former firefighter who was part of a District 1 crew that went to the Yellowstone fires in 1988 said he saw West remove and discard a property tag from a piece of equipment that was loaded onto a passenger van headed back to Wenatchee. The firefighter kept the tag and presented it to investigators last summer. A $2,000 pump bearing the same property number was listed as lost in the 1988 fires in Montana.