LOS ANGELES – A homeless man has been sentenced to 45 months in prison and ordered to pay more than $101 million in restitution for starting two fires, including a 2006 blaze that burned more than 163,000 acres in Los Padres National Forest.
U.S. District Judge Valerie Baker Fairbank sentenced 50-year-old Steven Emory Butcher on Monday for felony and misdemeanor charges related to the blazes.
Butcher was convicted in February of starting the fire by burning debris at his campsite in Piru Canyon as well as the smaller Ellis Fire in the same forest in 2002.
The Los Padres forest fire cost more than $78 million to suppress. It injured 18 people and destroyed 11 structures.
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