BY QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
Lincoln County Sheriff’s deputies are seeking an arsonist believed to have set fire to two vehicles on Yachats River Road in the past week — a sedan parked in a pullout a half mile east of U.S. Highway 101 and an abandoned recreation vehicle just a quarter mile farther east.
The interior of the car was burned and windows broken early Monday evening, according to the sheriff’s office.
The RV, which had been used for much of the summer and then abandoned and vandalized this fall, was burned to its frame and wheels Friday night.
By Wednesday, the RV’s metal remains had been removed, the gravel area cleaned and all that remained were some plastic bags filled with debris.
The RV had been sitting on private property owned by a company that had logged part of a 154-acre tract in the hills east of Yachats. Although Yachats fire chief Frankie Petrick had alerted the property owners to the fire, it was unclear Wednesday who had performed the cleanup.
The car fire was reported at 5:14 p.m. Monday, said sheriff’s Sgt. Jack Dunteman when a person called 9-1-1 after hearing a vehicle speed away and then saw flames. The car was not registered with the state, but deputies were able to find and contact the woman who owned it. Petrick said it belonged to a couple camping in the forest on the north side of Yachats River Road four miles upstream.
Dunteman said deputies had no solid leads on a suspect or suspects to either fire.
On Friday, Yachats firefighters were dispatched at 8:13 p.m. and found the RV engulfed in flames. Crews from Yachats and Central Oregon Coast Fire & Rescue in Waldport extinguished it – but not before it burned and left nothing but metal remains.
The RV was the subject of complaints to the sheriff’s office during the summer because of the accumulation of trash and its proximity to the Yachats River. Sheriff’s deputies told YachatsNews then they could do nothing because the vehicle was on private property.
Even though it sits on the south side of Yachats River Road and over the river, the property is part of a 154-acre tract which lies mostly to the north, owned by Michael Riggs of Meridian, Idaho and Chuck Grabow of Prairie City, Ore. Riggs logged between 69 and 120 acres of the property – there are conflicting accounts of the amount – immediately east of Horizon Hill Road between 2011 and 2014.
The Oregon Department of Forestry has issued $14,000 in fines to Riggs’ company since then because he did not file and execute a reforestation plan, as required by state law. Riggs did not respond to the fines and collection has been turned over to the Oregon Department of Revenue, an ODF spokesman told YachatsNews earlier this year.
Not sure how to feel about this one. At least the abandoned trash finally got cleaned up.
I’m not sure how to feel about this either. My car was the one torched and it was not abandoned. I was living in it, and just happened to be at work at the time. And now they towed it even though it sat on private property. They have not done anything about the case, and it had not been released to me yet from evidence. It kind of worries me because it was vandalized three different times before that. It makes me feel threatened for my life.