The property owners have lots in the Dune Lake, Totek Lake and Teklanika Channel Lake subdivisions. The subdivisions surround small lakes in the flatlands west of the Teklanika River, off the road system.
Cindy Walker, Charles and Margaret Gray and the William Brewer family are asking the state for at least $100,000 in each of four lawsuits. William Brewer II owns most of the affected land — more than 30 lots. Charles Gray is a former publisher of the News-Miner.
“The point is, what’s a piece of burned-out property worth versus a piece of beautiful lakeside property?” said Bill Satterberg, who is representing the landowners. “You can’t just go around destroying people’s property and not pay for it.”
The lawsuits were filed in Superior Court at the Rabinowitz Courthouse this week. The state has not responded. Efforts to get a comment from the Alaska Department of Law were unsuccessful.
According to court filings, the wildfires involved were the Railbelt Complex Fires that burned west of Nenana in 2009.
The landowners claim the state failed to mop up after rains doused the fires and the fires re-ignited. The state decided to light back-fires on private property to create a fire line, suppressing the wildfires.
The back-fires destroyed timber and foliage on the private property, decreasing the properties’ value, according to the lawsuit.
Lighting the back-fires amounted to taking the land under eminent domain “for which just compensation is due under Article I, section 18 of the Alaska Constitution,” the court complaint stated.
“They basically scorched their property,” Satterberg said. “The only thing that didn’t get burned down were the cabins.”
Contact staff writer Amanda Bohman at 459-7544.
This is the most absurd thing I've read in a long time.
To those who are suing, thanks again for WASTING tax dollars for your greed.
Oh, BTW - I have a cabin in the area. Thank you Firefighters for keeping the flames away from it!!
Fires are a natural process, part of the succession of the forests of Interior Alaska. This land is now going to be better moose habitat. It is already producing a great crop of mushrooms.
I hate the smoke, but I understand that there is nothing that can be done about it. Smoke in the summer comes with living in Interior Alaska and has since pre-history.
These people bought land from the state. They did not live there and did not even have cabins there. With thirty lots, they obviously bought this land as speculation for resale. Now this land has less value temporarily, but that is what happens with speculation --sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. Did they have sales lined up that they lost because of the lower value? Probably not. It is just going to take longer to sell the land. I have NO sympathy.
1.Show up for public comment meetings
2.Become a firefighter.
3.Read the actual policies, some of your cabins are not in a protection area, some are not registered(trespass)
4.Report your structures to the firefighters prior to fires. I know some of you will not because you do not want to be taxed.
Why am I not surprised to see the name Satterberg associated with this law suit?
Says it all........
We'll be reading of this mess & greed for a spell.
During the course of your deep thinking I think you forgot that fire generates smoke. If they create new fire fighting policies to eliminate fires then the smoke will be eliminated, and hence, not much smoke coming into town.
And AKobvious, it's obvious you're not a very deep thinker - you live in a developing boreal forest region so there is wildfire smoke each season, some worse than others. Government can not decide how mother nature is going to behave or where the smoke from wildfires may go. Get used to it or leave - those are the two choices.
Raw land is valued just as it's named - LAND. As in dirt. Anyone with even a feeble understanding of real estate/property happenings knows this.
These jokers are just a bunch of greedy bums - one of them owns over 30 lots?!?! Pretty sure he'll find a way to "make ends meet" when it grows back in a few years.
The firefighters that worked this region last year are absolute ROCKSTARS - they did a phenomenal job in protecting property, including mine. I can't thank them enough for what they accomplished and how hard they worked.
I was one of the handful of property owners in the area that put in a significant amount of energy to PROTECT IT MYSELF well before the firefighters arrived - yard/lot lines brushed out, down/dead stuff thinned or chucked in the river, PROACTIVELY build your place with fire potential in mind. Not complex, just elbow grease and time.
If you are interested enough in this issue to want to change it, there's a process to do so - work with DNR to have the fire protection classification of the area changed to reflect what you think it needs to be. Contact the land manager (again in this case DNR) and see what can be done to alter the management plan, i.e., change from "point protection" (in this case structures) to area/plot protection, to build fireline around developed/subdivided areas, similar to what succeeded in Tok this summer.
Lawsuits don't solve the problem - even someone dimwitted enough to hire an attorney could have put in an effort to address it if they actually cared about their property.
This summer we had the power lines behind our house fall and catch the ground on fire. Thankfuly someone was home to call 911. If it wasn't for the fire department our house would be gone right now. Along with the other houses in our area. Highest respect for the forestry and all fire fighters.
Come on folks take some responsibility for your friggin lives. No pun intended, but I hope these sue happy folks get BURNED.
I suppose someone HAS to be at fault with a natural wildfire.
And no, this isn't eminent domain, because they still own the land. It was not taken...it was merely used and the trees and foliage will grow back.