BLAME GLOBAL WARMING? - "Man Allegedly Starts 7 Brush Fires in Portland"

 

(L) Domingo Lopez Jr. and (R) a Molotov cocktail he allegedly used to start a fire in Portland, Ore., on Sept. 13, 2020. (Multnomah County Sheriff's Office; Portland Police Bureau)

CRIME AND INCIDENTS

Man Allegedly Starts 7 Brush Fires in Portland

BY ZACHARY STIEBER

 

September 14, 2020 Updated: September 14, 2020

 

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A Portland, Oregon, man released after lighting a brush fire allegedly set six more fires, police officials in Portland said.

Domingo Lopez Jr., 45, was spotted by a witness and confirmed to police officers that he set a fire next to I-205 on the afternoon of Sept. 13, according to the Portland Police Bureau.

Officers seized a charred plastic bottle with a wick as evidence, describing it as a Molotov cocktail, or an incendiary device.

Lopez, a Hispanic male, was released after being booked on charges of reckless burning and disorderly conduct.

Officers and firefighters rushed to the same area around 3:30 a.m. Sept. 14 after receiving a report of multiple fires burning in the brush.

Officers located Lopez walking along the highway and arrested him, seizing a lighter as evidence.

Lopez was taken to a hospital for a mental health evaluation and issued citations for six additional counts of reckless burning, the bureau said.

None of the fires damaged structures and no one was injured.

Matt Watts stands guard with firearms outside his home after wildfires and heavy smoke caused many of his neighbors to evacuate the area, in Estacada, Ore., on Sept. 12, 2020. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

A man stops on his bike along the Willamette River as smoke from wildfires partially obscures the Tilikum Crossing Bridge, in Portland, Ore., on Sept. 12, 2020. (John Locher/AP Photo)

Law enforcement officials said last week that rumors about Antifa members setting fires in Oregon were false, but a number of people have been taken into custody on arson and related charges on the West Coast.

In an effort to stop people from setting fires, some county residents set up roadblocks and were patrolling with guns, officials said over the weekend.

Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts told a press briefing on Sept. 13 that the armed individuals should “please stop.”

“If they see somebody suspicious, call us, let us handle it; it’s illegal to stop somebody at gunpoint,” he said.

Calls for criminal activity in the evacuated areas have skyrocketed 400 percent from the previous week, officials said.

“What we’re finding is in most of those cases, the largest majority of those calls are suspicious persons, people trespassing. We have made some arrests, but I want to make it clear that the majority of those calls are actually unfounded,” Roberts said.

Roberts said officials are dealing with “a lot of misinformation about folks trying to set fires.”

Another man was arrested in the county on Sept. 11 for setting a pile of leaves on fire in Oregon City, the sheriff’s office said. Sammy Piatt, 53, was arrested for arson and probation violation.

Margi Wyatt reacts after returning to find her mobile home destroyed by wildfire as her husband Marcelino Maceda (background) searches in the ruins in Estacada, Ore., on Sept. 12, 2020. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

A sign reads “Looters Get Shot” outside a residence in Molalla, Ore., on Sept. 13, 2020. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

Clackamas County is located next to Multnomah County, which includes Portland.

Fires have burned more than 1 million acres in Oregon in recent weeks, state officials announced Sept. 11. The number of Oregonians under evacuation notice jumped to 500,000 that day. More than 40,000 have been evacuated.

More than half of Clackamas County was under the highest evacuation level, with residents told to leave immediately.

Thirty-four fires are still active as of the morning of Sept. 14, according to the state Office of Emergency Management. The largest is the Beachie Creek Fire, which has consumed more than 188,000 acres in Clackamas County.

The fires are causing heavy smoke levels, leading to unhealthy conditions.

“Right now our region is experiencing the worst air quality in the world, and it’s absolutely having an impact on people’s health,” Sarah Present, the county’s public health director, told the briefing on Sept. 13.

Nancy Bush, the director of disaster management for the county, added that visibility is poor because of the fire and smoke, leading to potentially hazardous driving conditions.

“Please make sure that you allow extra time if you’re driving and make sure that you’re allowing extra stopping distances, and actually consider if travel is necessary,” she said.

“I’m also asking if you live in Clackamas County to please limit your water use. Every drop is needed for our firefighters in order to use the water to save someone’s home.”

Follow Zachary on Twitter: @zackstieber

Oregon catches arsonist in the act, 

lets him out, surprised to find he sets 

new fires

By Monica Showalter

There's stupid, there's pig-stupid, and there's Oregon. 

That's the astonishing picture we have here where a suspect, Domingo Lopez, Jr., 45, who had been arrested just 12 hours earlier for setting fires, got somehow let out and proceeded to commit to more arson, with the Antifa weapon of choice, the Molotov cocktail, as if that couldn't be foreseen.  The second time around, he set six fires.

Who needs global warming with guys like this?

The big fail here was from the justice system, which let the known firebug, freshly caught in the act, out and about.  Obviously, there's something going on with this.  How could anyone in authority be this stupid?

It's sheer lunacy to let a caught-in-the-act arsonist out at a time of high fires and not guess he'll go back to the same thing he was caught doing earlier.  But that's exactly what happened.

According to the Washington Examiner:

The man was released, but police said he then started six more small brush fires early Monday morning along the freeway. "Portland Fire and Rescue extinguished three of them while passing community members put out the other three. All were caught early. No one was injured and no structures were burnt. Officers located Domingo Lopez, Junior walking along the shoulder and arrested him. They seized a lighter as evidence," police said in a statement

There's some kind of disordered logic going on here, whether of the prosecutor or the Portland cops, or the political establishment leading them, the Ted Wheeler crowd.  You don't ever let a live arsonist firebug out after he's been caught once in the act, at a time of high, disastrous fires taking out whole towns and creating "mass casualty events," as has been the story in Oregon.  The state currently has a million acres on fire, as many as 20 dead, and 40,000 evacuated.

Who came up with the idea of letting this freak out?

And who was surprised that he did what he did?  As Nancy Pelosi puts it, "people will do what they do."

Was it because he had a lot of earmarks of Antifa (in his use of Molotov cocktails) that he got let out same as your average Portland rioter/looter?  Was it because Oregon is pretty much shutting down its law enforcement mechanisms, based on the rabid hundred-day siege of protests in Portland?  (Look at how bush-league the Portland police website is, for one — a sure sign of underfunding right there.)  Is it because of some bad new laws regarding bail on the books?  At this early stage, I don't know.  But something out there is trying to protect Antifa and the orbit of criminals around them with this lunatic act of letting an arsonist out and getting surprised he started more fires.

One thing we do know is that authorities are downplaying the damage the fiend did, saying the fires were small and put out, so we are supposed to think it's no big deal — read the statement of the Portland Police here.

We also know that Facebook is trying to suppress any information about Antifa involvement in these fires.  That has a funny smell in light of the fact that the arsonist used Molotov cocktails to set his blazes, the Antifa weapon of choice, instead of just plain matches or cans of gasoline, as ordinary arsonists do.  Doesn't everyone have a spare Molotov cocktail on hand?

The Portland cops even posted a photo of it:

Press Release: Suspect Starts Six More Brush Fires, Faces Additional Charges (Photo)
Link: https://t.co/t4LhmgCYSc pic.twitter.com/148JY333Pl

— Portland Police (@PortlandPolice) September 14, 2020

Here's the other disturbing detail: he's not the only one.  A creep was arrested for arson in Lane County here, and three other firebugs were arrested in Washington and California, suggesting quite possibly some sort of plan.  Antifa, remember, said that if it doesn't get what it wants, "cities will burn."

And here's the evidence that the problem is real, because the Oregon residents (not the dolts in Portland who vote blue and hold all the political power) are terrified.  CNN reports that some of them have started stopping unfamiliar cars into their towns at gunpoint.  CNN tut-tuts the activity, but it's pretty obvious that Oregon's normals are convinced that the authorities aren't about to protect them, and they are scared enough to take matters into their own hands.  It's also disturbing that at a time like this, the Oregon fire marshal has resigned for murky reasons, a development that will be sure to hold more revelations, none of them likely to make the leftists running Oregon look good.  There's some kind of chaos churning among the leftists running that state, and Antifa and arsonists seem to be protected, which is why they're running wild.

It sounds like something very, very corrupt going on — all this kid glove treatment of Antifa, all this effort to spare Antifa's delicate feelings from critics, a sort of protection racket of Antifa and its coevals at the expense of the law-abiding.  Now there's this kid glove treatment of a live arsonist who uses Antifa's weapons of choice. 

It's almost as if Antifa had a muscular presence in the Portland government or something.  Letting this fiend out does not make sense, and Oregon's authorities apparently aren't bothered about looking like fools every time they bow to the forces of lawlessness.  There's something worse for them, it seems, than looking like fools.