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Oregon man, freed after using Molotov cocktail to start fire, set six more: cops
An Oregon man was charged with using a Molotov cocktail to start a brush blaze in the wildfire-devastated state then busted again just hours later for allegedly going back and starting six more, cops said.
Domingo Lopez Jr., 45, was first arrested Sunday afternoon after witnesses told cops he started a fire on the grassy edge of a Portland freeway with an incendiary device made out of a plastic bottle with a wick, the Portland Police Bureau said.
He admitted starting the blaze, which was extinguished without any injuries or property damage, cops said.
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Man arrested for igniting brushfire in Portland, starts SIX MORE fires in less than 12 hours after release police
Portland police arrested a man for starting a fire with a molotov cocktail and released him, only to take him into custody again the next day for allegedly setting six more fires.
Domingo Lopez Jr., 45, was booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center on Sunday evening after police discovered a blaze set on the side of a freeway. A witness identified the suspect, who admitted to police that hed set the fire.
Lopez Jr. used a molotov cocktail, a plastic bottle with a wick, to ignite the blaze. He was charged with reckless burning and disorderly conduct in the second degree, and was released without bail.
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Fires along the western slopes of the Cascades are infrequent but regular, with research studies using proxy information (such as charcoal remnants in the soil and tree ring/scaring data) finding stand-killing fires occur roughly every 250 years (e.g. this reference). Importantly, during the past century, few major fires has burned over western slopes of the Oregon Cascades, with the most prominent being the Yacolt Burn (1902, 500,000 acres) and the Eagle Creek Fire (2017, 50,000 acres), both near the Columbia Gorge east of Portland. Interestingly, there has been far more fire activity over the coastal mountains of Oregon than along the western slopes of the Cascades during the past 120 years.
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Why are strong easterly winds required for the megafires on the Oregon western slopes?
First, easterly winds tend to be very dry and usually warm, which helps desiccate surface fuels. Westerly winds off the ocean are generally cool and moist, not only bringing high relative humidity but often moving fog and low clouds over the western Cascade slopes, both negatives for fires. Easterly winds are from the dry, warm interior of the continent, and as the air sinks along the western slopes it is compressed and thus warmed as it moves to lower elevations (where pressure is higher). Because of the warming, the relatively humidity plummets as the air sinks. Very favorable for fires.
These winds decline in a warming world. They increase in a cooling world.
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