14A - The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, September 6, 1995
Arsonists burning
America's forests
for quick profit
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Arson-
ists are torching America's national
forests for profit, making money on
everything from fire equipment leases
to burned timber.
And legislation passed by Congress
in July could add even more fuel to the
billion-dollar fire sale, critics say.
Americans don't realize the extent of
arson in forest fires, says Michael
Francis, director of national forest pro-
grams for the Wilderness Society in
Washington.
"They think most fires are acciden-
tal, or caused by lightning. They'd be
shocked," he said.
In the Southeast, 90 percent of the
forest fires on federal land are deliber-
ately set, says Allen Polk of the U.S.
Forest Service. The figure is lower in
the West, where lightning is a major
factor-but that does not tell the whole
story.
In California only 12.8 percent of
fires on state-controlled land are arson
- but they account for 71.5 percent of
the dollar damage, said Karen Terrill of
the state forestry department.
"They are the most destructive," she
said. "Typically they set their fires where
they do the most harm."
Some arsonists light fires for the thrill,
and farmers touch off many others with
illegal burns to clear their land, espe-
cially in the Southeast.
But some federal law enforcement
officials are convinced there are many
more arson-for-profit fires than re-
ported.
"It's a nightmare for law enforce-
ment," says U.S. Attorney Charles
Stevens of California's Eastern Dis-
trict. "And regulatory agencies might
be inclined to err on the side of a low
npmber because people might infer they
are not doing the job,"
Forest fires are a big industry. The
nation spent $757 million fighting fires
on federal land last year, and hard-hit
California spent $60 million more on
state lands.
Large blazes generate contracts for
everything from watertankers and bull-
dozers to fire crews, food and toilet
paper - and generate them fast.
Stevens says money was the domi-
nant factor behind a series of fires in his
district's extensive federal forest lands.
"Based on our observations, the over-
whelming majority of the fires there
were arson for profit, 80 to 90 percent,"
he said.
The most glaring example, Stevens
says, was a string of blazes in 1992-93
in the Trinity and Shasta county areas
of Northern California.
Ernest Earl Ellison, 33, pleaded guilty
to helping set the fires, and was sen-
tenced last month to 15 1/2 months in
prison. Ellison owned a water tender
truck - which he leased to the U.S.
Forest Service to fight the fires he set.
Stevens said he believes there are
many other Ellisons out there.
Another source of arson fires are the
very people who fight them, says Patrick
Lyng, who trains criminal investigators
for the Forest Pervice.
"Unfortunately, one of the first places
we look at are firemen - that's been a
problem in the past," he says. "Volun-
teer firefighters aren't paid until they
have a fire."
On Aug.29 in the Mount Shasta area
of Northern California, the 60-year-old
mother of a firefighter was arraigned on
11 counts of arson. Prosecutors charge
she was motivated by a desire to create
work for her son.
The financial motives, already strong,
may be getting stronger.
A "salvage logging" provision
slipped into the $16 billion budget-
cutting bill approved by Congress and
signed by President Clinton in July
makes it easier for timber companies
to cut otherwise exempt trees after a
fire.
In May, U.S. Magistrate Thomas
Coffin in Portland, Ore., underscored
the danger of the policy in ruling for the
Sierra Club's suit to prevent logging
after a 1991 arson fire in the Warner
Creek area near Eugene.
The Warner Creek blaze followed a
controversy over its designation as a
spotted owl nesting area. Loggers op-
posed the designation, which - until
the free - had prevented them from
cutting trees in the area.
Environmentalists sued to stop log-
ging after the fire, arguing it rewarded
the likely arsonists. The magistrate
agreed.
"The effect of selling arson fire-dam-
aged timber could be future acts of
arson," the magistrate wrote in May.
"Allowing salvage logging after arson
in areas where the removal of timber
has been limited may provide an eco-
nomic incentive..."
Increasingly, environmentalists and
many within the Forest Service itself
question whether most fires should be
fought at all. While people and their
dwellings clearly must be protected,
fires are a natural part of forest ecology.
Whether or not firefighting policies
are changed, arson will be a likely out-
growth of looser laws and dwindling
resources, says Charlie Ogle, the Sierra
Club's forest expert in Oregon.
Clinging for life
Two severely malnourished twins hang onto their mother in the destroyed former U.N. compound in Gbarnga yesterday.
Study: U.S..ha enough prnary-care dghr*-octona
Newsday
During last year's health care reform
debate, most medical experts agreed
with the Clinton administration that the
United States needed more primary-
care doctors and fewer specialists. But
a new study contends that there are
plenty of general physicians to go
around.
"The ultimate goal ought not to be to
achieve a work force of 50 percent
generalists," said Michael Whitcomb,
senior vice president for medical edu-
cation at the Association of American
Medical Colleges.
Whitcomb's conclusion is at odds
with many medical experts who say
that 50 percent of the nation's doctors
should be deliverers of primary care.
Currently about 30 percent of the
country's physicians are generalists.
Those same experts also have been
calling on medical schools to change
their emphasis from specialty to pri-
mary-care education, something
Whitcomb says will happen anyway,
based on trends in the health care mar-
ketplace.
We need to shrink the number of specialists and
modestly increase the number of generalists."
-.
- David Kind
chair of the Council on Graduate Medical Educatic
In an article to be published in
today's Journal ofthe American Medi-
cal Association, Whitcomb compares
the number ofgeneralists in the United
States with physicians in Canada, Ger-
many and England. According to data
from 1991 and 1992, the United States
has 69 primary-care doctors per
100,000 people, England has 54,
Canada has 104 and Germany has 66
to 95.
Whitcomb said Canada needs to have
more generalists than the United States
because it makes little use of nurse
practitioners or physician's assistants.
In the United States, he said, such health
care professionals are increasingly be-
coming integral parts of many man-
aged-care practices.
But Neil Schlackman, a medical di-
rector forUS Healthcare, ahealth main-
tenance organization, says he hasn't
seen a large increase in such "physician
extenders."
In an interview, Whitcomb said the
ultimate doctor mix will be about 40
percent generalists to 60 percent spe-
cialists.
He said he bases that conclusion
partly on data from managed-care plans
that hire doctors to work in their cen-
ters.
But the heads of the Council on
Graduate Medical Education and the
federal government's Health Resources
& Service Administration disagreed
with Whitcomb's conclusion about the
adequacy of the nation's physician sup-
ply.
"We need to shrink the number of
specialists and modestly increase
number of generalists," said Da
Kindig, chair of the Council on Gra
ate Medical Education. In addition,
said, physicians' services need to
more equitably distributed. .
"There are still more generalists
the rich suburbs than there are in n
and urban areas," he said.
Ciro Sumaya, administrator of
Health Resources & Service Admi
tration, said the United States may n
more generalists because Americ
have higher expectations of their hea
care system. American technology
"new treatments and medications
procedures that are proceeding-. v
rapidly," he said. "To get those to
communities, we need to have su
cient providers."
.. _
I
Welfare reform efforts face
Catch-22 over child care costs
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON - For Angie
Sanches, the situation is a puzzle: The
government wants her to get off wel-
fare and go to work, which she is ready
and able to do. But the government
would apparently rather keep mailing
her welfare checks than help with the
child care she needs if she is to hold a
job.
Sanches was so determined to get
into the work force and off welfare that
when she failed to find a job in her
hometown in Ohio, she packed up and
moved to Bloomington, Minn., where
opportunities were better. Sure enough,
she landed a good job quickly.
But when she asked for subsidized
day care for her 3-year-old daughter,
state officials told her that the only way
she could get help in less than 18 months
was to go back on welfare.
The vision of a new welfare system
that moves poor parents into jobs in-
stead of continuing to subsidize long-
term dependence with unending assis-
tance is popular with both taxpayers
and welfare recipients.
But for many recipients - and for
beleaguered local officials too - the
dream of "ending welfare as we know
it" often founders on the rock of child-
care dilemmas. Also, funding day care
will be one of the hottest issues on the
table now that the Senate has returned
from its August recess and begins final
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debate on revising welfare.
The pending GOP plan, endorsed
Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole {
Kan.) and most Republican senate
would lump federal child-care doll
together with funds for cash bee
and pay them out in block grants
states, which would have the powei
decide how much to allocate foe ch
care.
Federal funding would be frozer
1994 levels, when the government p
vided about $2 billion for child care
welfare recipients.
The problem with this, Democi
and some moderate Republicans arg
is with budget constraints holdingdo
federal aid, the block grants would
be large enough to cover all the nee
especially as new rules require m+
recipients to take jobs.
The result could be a "home alo:
situation, critics say: If states are
able or unwilling to make up the difi
ence, welfare recipients could be fart
to leave their children without ad~qu
supervision while they work.
Trying to avoid a deadlock over
issue, Dole modified the GOP plai
the end of the last congressional s
sion to give states an option of
empting mothers with chikld
younger than 1 from work requi
ments. That would ease states' Thi
care needs, but some fear it would
be enough.
Nationwide, funding for the t
child-care programs for welfare rec
ents and those moving offwelfarGm
than doubled from 1991 to 1994,
states started to prod welfare recii
into the work force.
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S2750 Jackson Ave.*llours: 7ani-llpm Daily ___________
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