Overview
When a jury returns to a packed courtroom to announce its verdict in a capital murder case every noise, even a scraped chair or an opening door, resonates like a high-tension cable snap. Spectators stop rustling in their seats; prosecution and defense lawyers and the accused stiffen into attitudes of wariness; and the judge looks on owlishly. In that atmosphere of heightened expectation the jury entered a Riverside County Superior Court room in southern California to render a decision in the trial of Raymond Oyler, charged with murder for setting the Esperanza Fire of 2006, which killed a five man Forest Service engine crew sent to fight the blaze.Today, wildland fire is everybody’s business, from the White House to the fireground. Wildfires have grown bigger, more intense, more destructive—and more expensive. Federal taxpayers, for example, footed most of the $16 million bill for fighting the Esperanza Fire. But the highest cost was the lives of the five-man crew of Engine 57, the first wildland engine crew ever to be wiped out by flames.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
Caused by arson and driven by the wind, Southern California's Esperanza Fire of October 2006 destroyed 40,000 acres and took the lives of five brave firefighters. Finally brought under control after four days, the blaze was the worst U.S. wildfire in more than twenty years. This swift-moving conflagration marked the first time that an entire engine crew had died in a wildland fire; but it marked the first time that an arsonist was successfully prosecuted for setting such a fire. At a time when wildfires and arson continue to haunt us, this new book by John McLean deserves a wide audience. (P.S. With books like Fire on the Mountain, Fire and Ashes, and The Thirtymile Fire, MacLean has earned accolades as "the Bob Woodward of forest fires.")