Bates letter: Labrador commentary

I am responding to Raul Labrador’s Jan. 13th commentary. Mr. Labrador and many others who are supporting the Hammonds, from Harney County, either don’t have all the facts or are choosing to leave them out of the discussion. I was in a firefighting aircraft, over one of several fires that were ignited by the Hammonds that day. That fire was started below Federal firefighters, and grew so quickly that they had to leave the area, or be overrun by the fire. A lot of the young men and women fighting the fires that day were from the Burns area. When you randomly light fires you are taking, and accepting the risk that someone from your own community may be injured or killed in the suppression efforts. That in itself makes it inexcusable. Wildland firefighting is already a dangerous enough business without arsonists.

This story was originally published January 24, 2016 at 11:11 PM with the headline "Bates letter: Labrador commentary."