Hostile pot farmers forced retreat from Lava Fire in Northern California, sheriff says

Cannabis farmers who have set up hundreds of greenhouses near the town of Weed say local authorities and fire agencies let the Lava Fire burn through their properties in the Mount Shasta Vista subdivision on Monday without bothering to try to put it out, blocking them from bringing their own water trucks so they could fight the fire themselves.

Local authorities disputed those charges and said the marijuana farmers blocked roads, threw rocks and forced Cal Fire crews to retreat from the scene. The tensions between the farmers, who are mostly of Hmong and Chinese descent, was the latest flare-up between law enforcement and growers in the remote area that reached a deadly point this week when officers shot and killed a Hmong man who they say tried to drive through a checkpoint brandishing a gun.

After the fire swept through most of their neighborhood, the farmers were using their water trucks to douse their smoldering properties on Tuesday. Authorities estimate there are 5,000 to 6,000 greenhouses growing pot in the Big Springs area, with as many as 4,000 to 8,000 people tending them.

In interviews with The Sacramento Bee, cannabis growers said the lack of firefighting response is the latest act of racism against them by Siskiyou County officials, who have for more than a year cracked down on the illegal cannabis farms that have been expanding dramatically on the private lands in the Big Springs area in far Northern California.

“The fireman just work today only. They don’t do nothing yesterday,” said Michael Thao, who along with three other Hmong men and women on Tuesday evening were hosing down smoldering juniper trees, brush and burning greenhouses with a hose connected to the back of a water truck.

“They’re trying to get us out,” he said.

Sheriff Jeremiah LaRue denied those claims Wednesday, saying in an interview with The Bee that firefighters stayed out of Shasta Vista on Monday because the growers themselves were hostile to first responders.

“In the last few days we’ve had water trucks the growers had that have been blocking roadways, that have prevented Cal Fire from getting in there to fight the fire,” the sheriff said. “Rocks were being thrown at fire personnel.

“Monday night, we had calls from some Cal Fire and other fire personnel that they had people lurking around their vehicles, stopping them and being aggressive, yelling at them. Cal Fire didn’t feel safe, and they pulled out and went to a safe location and communicated with law enforcement.”

A Cal Fire spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday, but the sheriff said the acrimony from the growers kept authorities from battling the blaze.

“We’ve been trying to get fire in there to help them out,” LaRue said. “They’re trying to assert they have ownership of that subdivision, that they’re outside the laws of California and common decency in us wanting to put the fire out.”

‘Pretty gnarly out there’

Siskiyou County officials have long maintained that the growers’ race has nothing to do with the crackdown on the grows, which they say are polluting the environment with trash and chemicals, harming the groundwater supply and leading to a spike in violent crime.

LaRue said the area is packed with large barrels of solvents and chemicals, which has endangered fire crews and likely will delay the ability to allow residents back in until authorities determine it is safe.

“When the fire was raging there Monday lots of big explosions were occurring, and we’ve had these giant barrels of solvents and whatnot, so there is going to be a long-term concern about the impact on this area.

“It’s pretty gnarly out there,” LaRue said. “Now, there’s stuff blowing up and leaking out into the ground.”

LaRue’s remarks came after local officers shot and killed a Hmong man leaving the Shasta Vista subdivision. The Sheriff’s Office said he pointed a gun on them and fired as they ordered him to make a left turn on County Road A-12 instead of turning right into a closed area.

“The driver of the GMC ignored numerous directions by officers and attempted to drive around the roadblock and head southbound on County Road A-12 toward the evacuation zone,” the sheriff said late Tuesday on Facebook.

“While the law enforcement officer was communicating with the driver, the driver raised his hand and pointed a semi-auto handgun at the officers. Peace Officers from the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the Etna Police Department shot the driver.”

A neighbor told The Bee on Tuesday that he heard dozens of shots fired.

Authorities haven’t identified the dead man. District Attorney Kirk Andrus, whose office is investigating the shooting, didn’t return messages seeking comment.

Some conservative rural counties, including Siskiyou, have chosen not to allow any commercial cannabis operations. (Proposition 64, approved in 2016, allows local governments to ban commercial cannabis operations if they choose.) Siskiyou, population 44,000, limits the number of pot plants on a property to 12.

Authorities have banned outdoor grows.

To starve the grows in and around Shasta Vista of water, Siskiyou County has banned water trucks on certain roads and prohibited local farmers with large agricultural wells from selling them water.

Recently, the sheriff also enlisted local volunteer bulldozer operators to tear down the greenhouses during the sheriff’s raids. Deputies have threatened to cite local businesses supplying the cannabis farms with soil, lumber and other materials that amount to “aiding and abetting in the illegal activity.”

In a court filing late Tuesday, attorneys for the Hmong growers wrote that “law enforcement officers have blocked water trucks from entering the Shasta Vista Subdivision that were attempting to help eradicate the fire and prevent property damage in the subdivision.”

“This is consistent with plaintiffs’ earlier declarations suggesting that the Hmong people are being denied access to water for firefighting purposes,” the filing states, adding that lawyers for the Hmong growers “are currently investigating whether the shooting had any relation to attempts to bring water into the Hmong community, or attempts by Sheriff deputies to block access to water.”

‘They don’t care about us’

On Tuesday evening, choppers hauling water were dumping it on the juniper trees and sagebrush burning along the edge of the Mount Shasta Vista subdivision.

A day earlier, Forest Service officials said the winds were so powerful Monday afternoon that air tankers and helicopters were grounded for hours.

Whatever concerns local authorities had about firefighter safety inside Shasta Vista also appeared to have eased.

Firefighters were patrolling the subdivision Tuesday and putting out spot fires around the grow sites, many of which were strewn with trash and dilapidated RVs that had been there long before the fire burned through them.

The growers, many of whom refused to evacuate on Monday, said the response was too little, too late.

“We have property. We have animals. We spend our life out here,” said Sheng Xiong, who stayed to fight the fire at her marijuana grow, which she tends with her parents and her children who evacuated.

“They don’t care about us,” she said. “They don’t do anything.”

Tommy Yang along with his wife, Lu, were filling small plastic buckets from five-gallon water jugs hauled in the back of his pickup and dumping them onto smoldering trees and brush.

Yang said he doesn’t grow out there, but came to help with the fire since the firefighters had left the subdivision burn the day before.

“They let this thing happen. There are many Asian (water) trucks,” Yang said. “They want to help, but the cops, the local officers, say, ‘No, no, don’t do nothing.’ They do nothing.”

LaRue, the sheriff, said the growers’ own actions were to blame.

“We’ve had people running roadblocks to get in there,” LaRue said. “Essentially, there’s a whole bunch of people trying to keep us from keeping them safe and stopping the fire from spreading. ... I’ve just never experienced this before.”

This story was originally published June 30, 2021 at 9:33 AM.