Both victims of California’s Mill Fire identified as family sues Weed lumber mill owner
The son of an immigrant from the Philippines who was killed in the wildfire that torched nearly 100 homes in Weed earlier this month is suing the owner of the lumber mill on whose property the fire started.
Joselito Bereso Candasa filed a wrongful death suit against Roseburg Forest Products Co., saying his mother — Lorenza Mondoc Glover, 65 — was one of the two victims of the Mill Fire in Siskiyou County.
Separately, the Siskiyou County sheriff’s office Wednesday identified the other victim as 73-year-old Marilyn Hilliard. Until Wednesday, the county hadn’t identified either of the victims.
Candasa’s lawsuit, filed in Superior Court in his hometown of San Francisco, says his mother died Sept. 2 as she tried frantically to escape the flames that began on Roseburg’s property and quickly spread to the nearby Lincoln Heights neighborhood in Weed, where she lived. Glover was a widowed hotel housekeeper who died less than a month before her 66th birthday.
The fire apparently started in or near a giant warehouse known as “Shed 17” on Roseburg Forest Products’ property, which erupted in a vortex of flames and black smoke.
Powerful winds pushed the flames and embers into Lincoln Heights, Weed’s historically Black neighborhood, which sits adjacent to the mill’s property.
“These people had no warning,” said Candasa’s attorney, Russell Reiner of Redding. “Lincoln Heights that day burned down within five to seven minutes.”
Hot ash in warehouse might have started fire
For more than a decade, Roseburg has operated a co-generation plant that turns unused wood into electricity. Last week, the company acknowledged that it stored hot ash from the biomass plant in a concrete bin inside Shed 17. The bin — practically the only structure that survived the fire — didn’t have a lid.
The company said a sprinkler system, supplied by a third-party vendor, was supposed to keep the ash cool and wet. Roseburg wouldn’t identify the vendor but said it’s investigating whether the system was working properly.
In an interview, Reiner said that “in all likelihood ash on the Roseburg property” ignited the fire, and the company knew fires on the property posed a threat to the adjacent community. Weed has powerful winds that flare up just about every afternoon, he said.
“Everybody in this area of Weed knows … that wind is a major issue,” Reiner said.
The Mill Fire destroyed 118 homes and other buildings, mainly in Weed and Lake Shastina, while burning through 3,395 acres; it is now 100% contained.
Abner Weed, the timber baron for whom the city’s named, picked the location to build a mill after discovering “that the area’s strong winds were helpful in drying lumber,” according to the city’s website.
Reiner also filed a separate suit in Siskiyou County on behalf of another homeowner, Tim Smith, who lost his home that day. The lawsuit said Smith also suffered personal injuries during the fire.
Reiner, a partner in the law firm Reiner, Slaughter, Mainzer & Frankel, said he’s representing more than 40 Siskiyou County families who lost their homes to the Mill Fire. Another Weed family, the Hammonds, which is represented by another firm, sued Roseburg last week over the destruction of their home.
The Hammonds’ lawsuit says Roseburg “failed to handle, cool, control and maintain this waste ash and the hot ash ignited the Mill Fire.” It adds that Roseburg knew “of a high risk of an uncontrollable fire” in the warehouse.
Robert Julian, Roseburg’s lawyer, said he couldn’t comment on the lawsuits.
Several current and former employees have told The Sacramento Bee that fires had ignited inside the warehouse over the years but were quickly extinguished.
Company officials have said they have no information to confirm that, and local officials haven’t yet responded to The Bee’s requests for information about previous fires inside the building.
Julian told The Bee Wednesday that Cal Fire officials have roped off key portions of the warehouse site and told Roseburg to hold off on the company’s investigation until Cal Fire has finished going through the premises.
“Cal Fire has asked us not to comment on the investigation until they’re finished,” he said.
Although Roseburg hasn’t acknowledged any liability, “the company recognizes … that the fire started on its property,” he added.
Last week, Roseburg announced it was setting up a $50 million community fund to help those who lost homes and vehicles secure lodging, food and transportation.
Julian said it will take a considerable amount of time for insurance carriers to begin paying claims, and the company is trying to help residents of Weed and Lake Shastina with immediate needs such as housing and clothing.
“Roseburg is not going to sit by and wait,” Julian said. “They posted those funds because they care about the community.”
Roseburg spokesman Pete Hillan said the company began dispensing funds Tuesday from the Weed Community Center. About 80 families received a total of $170,000, he said.
The center will likely stay open through Saturday, and Roseburg plans to open an online site for dispensing additional funds, he said.
Attorney disputes Roseburg goodwill
Reiner said the lumber company didn’t set up the fund “out of the goodness of their heart.”
Rather, he said it’s because the company “knows at the end of the day that they’re responsible for this fire, and they were negligent.”
Even before the fire, Roseburg had lost some favor in the town, despite its mill, which employed about 140 people, being a major economic driver.
Reiner said several of his clients, before the fire, were frustrated that Roseburg had recently tried to sell the rights to Weed’s water supply to a local bottling plant. The company sued the city after Weed pushed back against the deal.
After years of stalled negotiations and countersuits, the bottling company, Crystal Geyser Roxane, agreed to buy the water right from Roseburg. Last year, Crystal Geyser sold Weed access to water for a payment of $1.2 million over 12 years.
For decades, Weed had paid the mill’s owner a symbolic $1 a year to use the spring as the city’s water source.
As for Candasa, Reiner said he wasn’t yet ready to speak to reporters about his mother.
Last week on his mother’s Facebook account, Candasa informed Glover’s friends and loved ones of “the untimely death of my loving mother.”
“To my mother, my prayers are holding you close to my heart and may your soul Rest in Peace,” the post reads. “I love you, Mom.”
Reiner said Glover came to love Lincoln Heights, a community so tight knit it was common to have 40 or 50 neighbors show up for a birthday party. The same thing would happen if someone got sick.
“It wouldn’t just be family members,” he said. “Thirty or 40 people would come over and check on that person.”
Relatives of Marilyn Hilliard, the other victim of the fire, couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday. But last week her son Marty Hilliard, who lives in Redding, set up a Facebook fundraiser to help his family.
Besides losing his mother to the fire, his family is “also dealing with our dad in intensive care in the hospital,” he wrote. “My family has lost our family home amongst countless irreplaceable memories and items.”
In the 1920s, the mill was owned by the Long Bell Lumber Co., which recruited Blacks from its mills in the South, paid their train fare and moved them to Weed.
They lived in Lincoln Heights, then known as the Quarters, segregated from the rest of the city. In recent years the neighborhood had become racially integrated.
Oregon-based Roseburg acquired the mill property in the 1980s.
This story was originally published September 14, 2022 at 1:13 PM with the headline "Both victims of California’s Mill Fire identified as family sues Weed lumber mill owner."