Ellreese Daniel's trial

As you probably know, Ellreese Daniels was the Crew Boss and Type 3 Incident Commander on the Thirtymile Fire near Winthrop, Washington in 2001 on which four members of his crew were overrun by fire and died. On January 30, 2007 the U.S. Attorney in Spokane, Washington charged him with four counts of involuntary manslaughter and seven counts of making false statements.

On February 20, 2007, the IAWF released a survey of 3,362 firefighters which showed that 36% of the full-time wildland firefighters surveyed will make themselves less available to be assigned to wildland fires as a direct result of these federal charges.

Here is an update from Wildlandfire.com

"I met with Ellreesse's Federal Public Defender Tina Hunt here in Missoula on Thursday: she seems well prepared for the May 5th trial date, and hopes that the Judge will approve a site visit for the jurors. We talked about many of the issues that are well known to all of us, as well as some tactics and qualifications issues. Tina still expects a 6+ week long trial.

There will be lots of witnesses, especially on the Government side, telling their stories about what they saw, heard, were told, experienced. The 10/18 will be an important focus!
Maybe by July 1st, we'll have a clearer picture of the impacts of this attempted mis-carriage of justice. Tina was highly complimentary of many of the R-6 Fire Overhead that she has interviewed.

She encouraged firefighter attendance in support of Ellreese at the trial, yellow Nomex shirts and all!

Keep the Faith!

Dick Mangan"