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Transient ordered to pay $101M for setting fires
2008-11-18
LOS ANGELES - A homeless man has been sentenced to nearly four years in prison and ordered to pay more than $101 million for starting two fires, including one that burned more than 163,000 acres in California two years ago. Fifty-year-old Steven Emory Butcher was convicted in February of starting blazes in the Los Padres National Forest in 2002 and 2006. The 2006 fire raged for more than a month and cost more than $78 million to suppress. It injured 18 people, destroyed 11 structures and was the fifth-largest fire in California history, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The 2002 blaze burned 70 acres.
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