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CNN Live Today

Several Large Wildfires Burn in Colorado

Aired June 20, 2002 - 14:09   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Out West now, another hot issue, literally. Fire.

In Colorado alone, several major wildfires are burning out of control, the largest one near Denver.

CNN's Charles Molineaux is at the southern end of that fire, at the command post. And, our Mark Potter is in Denver, where the Forest Service employee accused of starting the fire is about to go to court.

Good afternoon, gentlemen.

Mark, I want to begin with you.

MARK POTTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, thank you, Fredricka.

Good afternoon on a very windy afternoon here outside the federal courthouse in Denver, where we are awaiting a bond hearing and possible arraignment of Terry Lynn Barton, the Forest Service employee who is now formally accused of setting the Hayman fire.

Now in that bond hearing, the prosecutors are expected to argue that she should not be set out on bail, that she should stay in jail until her trial. Because they argue that she is a flight risk.

They say that because she faces very serious charges and cold spend decades in prison, and because she is widely hated here and there is a threat to her safety, she has every reason to flee the area and, therefore, should not be let out on bond.

The defense, of course, will argue the opposite point when that hearing gets under way.

Now, yesterday, a grand jury met here in Denver and formally indicted her. She faces four counts, and they are that she willfully set the fire, the Hayman fire; that she damaged United States property, and that's the forest land itself and the trees; that she caused injury to a firefighter, and endangered others, and that by far is the most serious of the charges; and that she used fire to commit a felony.

Now, if she is convicted of all four counts and receives the maximum penalty consecutively, she could get 65 years in prison. Now, this case has unfolded very dramatically in just the last few days. As you know, at the outset, Ms. Barton said that she smelled smoke on her rounds, and then encountered the fire and called it in. But investigators got on the scene, and got looking at the forensic evidence, and concluded that that account did not make sense.

So they confronted Ms. Barton, who they say then confessed that she indeed started a fire. She set fire to a letter that she had received from her estranged husband, put it inside a fire ring, she said, thought the fire was out, and then left, only to discover later that the fire had started up again, and started the big wildfire.

Now, investigators are indicating that even that story is something that they do not believe. They are saying that this fire was set willfully, and in an affidavit that was presented to the court on the day of her arrest, one of the investigators was quoted as saying that he felt that this fire was deliberately set and had been staged to look like an escaped wildfire. Staged to look like that.

Now, the people who know her very well say they cannot believe that she would do something like this on purpose.

WHITFIELD: Mark, I'm sorry. I have so to interrupt. We'll get back to that case in a moment.

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