The Associated Press
SACRAMENTO -- Union Pacific Railroad Co. has agreed to a $102 million settlement to pay for damages from a massive California wildfire in what federal officials described Tuesday as a precedent-setting case.
U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott said the settlement marks the U.S. Forest Service’s largest ever damage recovery for a wildfire.
The Omaha-based company agreed to settle after a federal judge in Sacramento ruled against it in February, Union Pacific spokeswoman Zoe Richmond said.
What prompted the settlement was not just the judge’s decision, but what it included.
U.S. District Judge Frank C. Damrell Jr. said the federal government could seek damages far beyond the previous legal benchmarks ” lost market value of burned trees and the cost of fighting the fire.
He ruled that a jury also could consider the loss of public recreation, scenery and wildlife, as well as wilderness areas with old-growth trees that never would have been logged for sale.
That would allow the government to seek significantly higher damages. In this case, the government estimated that could be as high as $190 million, a figure the railroad was disputing, according to court records.
“A precedent has been set here ... that will let us assess the true, inherent value of forest land,” U.S. Associate Attorney General Kevin O’Connor said during a news conference in Sacramento.
He said the case would serve as a national model for the U.S. Forest Service and Justice Department.
Federal officials also announced that U.S. attorneys in Sacramento, Los Angeles and Utah have dedicated teams to recover damages from people and entities deemed to have started costly wildland blazes.
“It’s sending a message that their negligence in setting a fire has consequences,” O’Connor said.
An estimated $600 million in such damages could be recovered nationwide from fires set on Forest Service land, said Mark Rey, undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the head of the Forest Service.
The Union Pacific settlement is the result of a lawsuit filed after the Storrie Fire, which started in August 2000 in Plumas County, about 100 miles northeast of Sacramento. The fire burned more than 52,000 acres in the Plumas and Lassen national forests before it was contained three weeks later at a cost of $22 million.
It later was determined that sparks from welders repairing tracks set it off.
Richmond, the company spokeswoman, said railroad employees thought they had extinguished the sparks that were burning alongside the tracks. Union Pacific said it was likely that a passing train blew them back to life.