Veteran Forest Service wildfire spotter died in California wildfire. Now her family is suing
.JPG "A scorched vehicle rests sits next to a driveway as the McKinney Fire burned in Klamath National Forest in July. The sister of Kathy Shoopman, Forest Service wildfire lookout killed in the blaze, is suing electric utility PacifiCorp.")
The sister of Kathy Shoopman, a longtime U.S. Forest Service wildfire lookout who was killed in the McKinney Fire in Siskiyou County, is suing the electric utility that might have been responsible for the fire.
Shoopman’s sister Shirley Shoopman sued PacifiCorp, the Oregon-based utility that serves the area where California’s worst wildfire of 2022 began.
PacifiCorp’s “negligence was a substantial factor in causing Kathy Shoopman’s death,” says the lawsuit, filed in Sacramento Superior Court by the Fox Law firm of Solana Beach.
Shirley Shoopman was joined in the lawsuit by more than 50 property owners seeking damages from PacifiCorp.
The fire burned 60,138 acres in the Klamath National Forest. It killed four people and destroyed 194 homes and other buildings, with all of the fatalities and much of the damage occurring in the community of Klamath River.
Shoopman, 73, had worked for the Forest Service since 1974 as a wildfire spotter. She and her fellow victims died in the McKinney Fire’s earliest hours, when a thunderstorm breathed fierce winds into the fire and caused rapid expansion.
“During the initial push of the fire, the thunder cell collapsed ... and she was caught in her home,” said Tom Stokesberry, a fire public affairs specialist at the U.S. Forest Service, in an interview earlier this month. “The way that fire pushed through there, it left little time.” He called her a Forest Service “legend” who was known among firefighters for being able to pinpoint a fire’s location with remarkable accuracy.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation. But property owners have begun suing PacifiCorp after the utility filed a report with the Public Utilities Commission saying it has distribution lines in the vicinity of where the fire appeared to have started. But the company said it hasn’t been granted access to the scene by investigators and was filing the report “out of an abundance of caution.”
Tom Gauntt, a spokesman for the company, declined comment on the latest lawsuit.