RSSThirtymile crew boss admits two misdemeanors
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Instead, they will tell a federal judge about how the deaths changed their lives and how they think crew boss Ellreese Daniels should be sentenced for his role in that tragedy.
By that time, Central Washington firefighters Tom Craven, Karen FitzPatrick, Jessica Johnson and Devin Weaver will have been dead for more than seven years.
Weaver, 21, Johnson, 19, and FitzPatrick, 18, were from Yakima; Craven, 30, lived in Ellensburg.
The four were killed July 10, 2001, while battling a blaze ignited by an unattended campfire. They were trapped by flames when an inferno swept over them on a dead-end road along the Chewuch River in the Okanogan National Forest.
Another Yakima firefighter, Jason Emhoff, was burned, and a pair of Thorp campers, Bruce and Paula Hagemeyer, were trapped with the crew.
Investigations by the U.S. Forest Service and the Yakima Herald-Republic found that a series of supervisors did not take steps they should have, including selection of a safe escape route.
But Daniels' attorney argued that fire behavior and terrain played a large role and that Daniels never meant to act recklessly or negligently.
Tuesday's announcement that Daniels would plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of lying to investigators ended another stage of the Thirtymile fallout. He was the only one to face charges.
Until Thursday, Daniels had been scheduled to face an unusually long two-month federal trial in Spokane on four counts of involuntary manslaughter and seven counts of lying to investigators.
But over the weekend, federal prosecutors begin prepping the families for an announcement that Daniels would plead guilty to the lesser charges.
Daniels had refused an earlier offer to plead guilty to a single felony. Federal prosecutors attributed their new position to "a recognition of the evidence and the law as it exists," according to an Associated Press report.
The families have been told that Daniels could face up to two years in jail, though his defense attorney will argue for probation.
The families had generally hoped that the trial, set to start Monday, would bring accountability for Daniels and a public airing of his actions.
However, many in the firefighting community contended that the unprecedented prosecution unfairly targeted Daniels and sent a chilling message into the ranks of his colleagues across the nation.
Daniels, 47, continues to work for the U.S. Forest Service as a permanent seasonal employee in Wenatchee. He no longer has firefighting duty.
Because the agency has already handed down unspecified discipline against him, he will keep his job regardless of the criminal conviction, federal defender Christina Hunt said.
Daniels took the deal to avoid the prospect of a felony conviction, though Hunt said she remains convinced that he never meant to lie.
She said his disputed answers -- having to do with whether he had repeatedly ordered the doomed firefighters to come down from the rocky slope where they died, and whether fire engines arriving at the scene checked in with him by radio -- were taken out of context in the indictment, issued more than five years after the fire.
Relatives of the firefighters who died said they still want the federal wildland fire service to improve its safety record.
Since Thirtymile, seven firefighters have been fatally trapped by forest fires in Idaho and California.
"What is the justice system going to tell the next set of parents? This was supposed to be the waterline," Kathie FitzPatrick, Karen's mother and one of the most outspoken of the family members, said about the Daniels case.
"The line needs to be drawn here in the sand so it's less likely to happen again. This is not time to be Jell-O," FitzPatrick said in an interview before Tuesday's announcement.
But FitzPatrick said prosecutors apparently hesitated to take the case to trial because of questions about whether witnesses, including current and former Forest Service employees, would remain solid in their testimony.
Barb Weaver, Devin Weaver's mother, credited prosecutors for tackling the case in the first place. It was the first time a federal firefighter had been directly charged for fireline deaths.
But she and FitzPatrick both expressed concern that the lack of a trial leaves unanswered whether federal firefighters can be held criminally accountable for their actions.
"Apparently, if you're a government employee, you're pretty well above the law. You can't be fired, and you can't be tried," Weaver said.
Jody Gray, Jessica Johnson's mother, said she accepted the plea as another step forward in dealing with the "gruesome thoughts" of her daughter's death while always protecting her memory.
Most of all, Gray said, Daniels' plea acknowledges that Johnson and the others did not disregard orders to leave the rocky slope.
"That's justice to me. She deserves that. She wasn't that kind of person," Gray said.
Federal investigators revised their first report on the fire after being blasted by the families for claiming the victims had disobeyed. The four would have come down if they were told to do so, relatives said.
In a news release announcing the plea, federal prosecutors did not directly address why they accepted the plea.
But they urged federal agencies to continue efforts to make firefighting safer.
That "depends in part upon participants being truthful with investigators about what occurred," according to the statement.
Hunt said she believed Daniels would have been exonerated at trial because the prosecutors "reached too far" in trying to prove their case.
"There comes a point when you just need it to be over, because wounds will not heal while we let the government continue to pick at them ... and I think that was one of the reasons he was amenable to a plea," Hunt said.
Daniels feels "extraordinary remorse" over the firefighters' deaths, although he does not believe he was the cause, his attorney said.
"I hope we will always remember them. I know that Mr. Daniels will," Hunt said.
* Mark Morey can be reached at 577-7671 or mmorey@yakimaherald.com.
