Colorado forester held on fire charge

A worker for the US Forest Service appeared in court yesterday after admitting that she started the wildfires that have ravaged Colorado for days, by burning a letter from her estranged husband.

The crisis has devastated 40,000 hectares (100,000 acres) and forced thousands from their homes.

Terry Barton, a 38-year-old forestry technician, had been patrolling Colorado's Pike National Forest on June 8 in order to enforce a statewide ban on campfires.

She initially told authorities she had come across an illegal fire which she was unable to extinguish, and was widely praised - though not by name - for trying to prevent what is now called the Hayman fire. The blaze has destroyed 24 homes and left about 5,400 residents still evacuated.

In fact, according to court documents, she "looked at a letter that she had received that morning from her estranged husband and then she became angry and upset and decided to get rid of the letter".

She set it on fire with a match from her handbag, in a campfire ring where, had it not been for the ban, fires would have been permitted. Investigators "concluded that the fire was deliberately set and staged to look like an escaped campfire," the documents said.

Ms Barton, who has worked for the Forest Service for 18 years, appeared in court on charges of setting fire to timber in a national forest, damaging federal property and making false statements to investigators. If convicted, she could face 20 years in prison and a $500,000 fine.

US Attorney John Suthers, asked the judge that Ms Barton be held without bail, as otherwise "she would return to a community in which there is considerable hostility toward her". This hostility added to the risk that she might try to flee, he said.

Forest Service representatives, Washington officials and Ms Barton's friends and neighbours were unanimous in their shock at the outcome of the search for the culprit. "This is one of the hardest announcements I've had to make in my career," Rick Cables, of the Forest Service in Colorado, told a news conference.

"I'm shocked, and, with a lot of other people, in a state of disbelief. I'm saddened to say that one of our employees has admitted to starting the Hayman fire."

Joan Spigner, who runs a shop where Ms Barton was a regular customer, told the Associated Press that the Forest Service "was her life. She worked really hard. She came in really tired." The US agriculture secretary, Ann Veneman, said she was "shocked and saddened."

Ms Barton had first claimed that she had smelled the smoke from a campfire and gone to investigate. But investigators established that the direction of the wind meant she could not have done so, and subsequently found forensic evidence, which has not been made public, to further undermine her case.

Just before Ms Barton's arrest, her husband, John Barton, told the Denver Post that he had spent some time at her house recently to look after their two teenage daughters, but his wife had been upset and was sleeping at the forestry facility where she worked.

"She's been staying late," he said. "Some nights, she hasn't come home. She hasn't told me much."

The fire is the largest in Colorado's history and has been one of the most alarming, coming within 10 miles of Denver's outer suburbs and spreading panic among the small mountain communities near Colorado Springs in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

The Forest Service estimates that it will cost $52m (£35m) to extinguish.

By yesterday morning, fire crews said they had contained about 50% of it, thanks to favourable weather conditions - a vast improvement on Friday's figure of 5%.

Seven other wildfires are burning in Colorado, along with others in New Mexico and California, as the American West swelters in a severe drought.