Man accused of starting California's massive Park Fire makes first court appearance
Authorities say a burning car that was pushed into a Northern California gully less than a week ago sparked what's now one of the largest wildfires in the state's history. Officials said the Park Fire had grown to more than 373,000 acres as of Monday night — making it California's sixth-biggest ever.
The man accused of starting the inferno, Ronnie Dean Stout II, 42, made his first court appearance Monday and is being charged with reckless arson along with several enhancements, CBS News Sacramento reports.
He didn't enter a plea. No bail was set and the arraignment was scheduled to continue Thursday.
Court records show Stout has two prior felony convictions: one from 2001 and one from 2002. He was released from prison in October 2018.
Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey said this would be Stout's third strike if it's found the Park Fire caused serious bodily injury or death.
"For reckless arson, the upper term is four years. With his prior strikes, you can double that. Not make it 25 to life, but you can double that," Ramsey said.
He said Stout's blood alcohol content was above the legal limit when he was arrested Thursday, adding that "involuntary intoxication is not a defense for arson."
In Cal Fire's latest update Monday night, officials said the Park Fire had grown to 373,357 acres and was at 14% containment. That size — about 575 square miles — is almost half the size of Rhode Island, more than 12 times bigger than San Francisco County and slightly larger than the city of Los Angeles.
According to Cal Fire, the Park Fire now ranks between the Creek Fire of 2020, which burned 379,895 acres, and the LNU Lightning Complex Fire of the same year that burned 363,220 acres. The August Complex Fire, also in 2020, remains the largest in state history at more than 1 million acres burned.
Four counties — Butte, Plumas, Shasta and Tehama — have been impacted by the ongoing Park Fire. One-hundred-sixty-five structures have been destroyed, officials said. More than 4,200 other buildings remain threatened by the fire, which hasn't caused any known injuries or fatalities to civilians or firefighters so far, according to officials.
After days of what Cal Fire described as "rapid growth," when it exploded to cover tens and then hundreds of thousands of acres, Sunday brought cooler temperatures that helped reduce some of the fire's extreme behavior and allowed responders to "actively combat the fire outside of the National Forest lands." However, there was also less smoke on Sunday, causing a "warmer climate around the fire which has led to increased fire activity," officials said.
The blaze has sparked fire tornadoes and reached Lassen Volcanic National Park, which is now closed. The park said on Facebook on Saturday that the fire was approaching its western edge "three years after the Dixie Fire consumed much of the eastern portion."
"Staff are scrambling to save historic artifacts stored in the 1927 Loomis Museum," the park said.
Christopher Apel and his brother-in-law Bruce Hey told CBS Sacramento that their family has lived in the Cohasset area for decades and that they had people staying on their adjacent properties who had survived the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 84 people in the same region where the Park Fire is burning.
"Everything is burning," Apel said.
"I tried to outrun it," Hey added, saying he burned his left arm while evacuating.
"I wouldn't have gotten burned if I hadn't rolled down the window to look in the rearview mirror," he said. "I was right in the middle of it and I was trying to put it in reverse."
Julie Yarbough, a former news anchor and reporter for CBS Los Angeles, watched her home burn down in real-time through a video feed of her home security camera.
"Our house is gone, their house is OK," she says of the aftermath in her neighborhood. "The house next to it you can see it's gone."
She said she doesn't think the full blow of the loss has sunk in yet.
"It really is almost a numbness," she told CBS Sacramento. "It's surreal."
