The Register-Guard
Posted on 06/05/2002 2:33:45 PM PDT by Glutton
Vandals pillage remote cabin
By SCOTT MABEN
The Register-Guard
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Someone broke into the Taylor Burn cabin and proceeded to smash appliances with an ax, break glass out of cabinets, cut up furniture, ruin winter provisions and spray a chemical fire extinguisher over the mess. The Willamette National Forest estimated the damage at $5,000.
"The cabin was totally trashed," said Gary Guttormsen, a volunteer wilderness ranger from Springfield and retired Thurston High School art teacher. "They just clearly had a mandate to cause as much damage as they could."
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 The interior of the remote Taylor Burn cabin was ransacked by vandals. Photo: GARY GUTTORMSEN |
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A Forest Service volunteer since 1990, Guttormsen has put a lot of his own time and money into restoring and stocking the 72-year-old cabin.
"I felt totally violated," he said. "It's pretty disgusting."
The cabin is used primarily by Forest Service volunteers who maintain nearby wilderness trails and help visitors. It also has been a staging area for firefighters and search and rescue operations and a refuge for hikers caught in storms.
The cabin was built around 1930 for crews battling wildfires. A nearby garage housed a fire engine. Guttormsen and other volunteers have helped restore the historical integrity of the cabin by putting in a new ceiling and floor.
"Over the years I've done a lot of maintenance and upgrades on the cabin," he said. "It needed a lot of work."
The cabin is locked when not in use. The vandal or vandals broke through a rear window, which had been covered by plywood. Guttormsen noticed it right away and peered inside.
"I could see it was a disaster area," he said.
Debris was scattered ever- ywhere. A new propane refrigerator had been chopped with an ax. Something was poured on a new mattress, damaging it. Someone also urinated in the building.
"I sure would like to know what the political motivation was, if there was one," Guttormsen said.
Willamette forest employees find at least one major act of vandalism a year, spokeswoman Julie Cox said. The crimes usually occur in the fall, winter and spring, when fewer people use sites.
Forestwide, between 10 percent and 15 percent of the annual recreation budget goes to repair vandalism, Cox said.
"It's so senseless, because the people who are hurt by it are really the visitors," she said. "People will now have to go in and spend a lot of time and effort making repairs, and that's time they won't be spending on trails."
Guttormsen, who was awarded the agency's Chief's Award for Individual Volunteer Service last year, spends much of his summers in the small cabin. He last visited it at the end of October, during hunting season.
The break-in may have been fairly recent, Cox said, because snowmobilers probably would have informed the Forest Service if the cabin had been vandalized during the winter.
Thieves broke into the cabin two years ago and left a window open, resulting in heavy rain and snow damage inside.
It may be a month before repairs can be made. A road leading to the cabin is blocked by hundreds of trees killed by a 1996 fire in the wilderness, Guttormsen said.
Anyone with information on the vandalism is asked to call the Middle Fork Ranger District at 782-2283.
That's a curious comment. Why is he assuming some sort of political motivation?
Nobody seems to have too much sympathy for this if they work on forest protest I notice.
He isn't, although it is the most likely possibility. There are a large number of self-hating young white males out to destroy every work of man as "an anthropocentric violation of the purity of nature." It is an act of personal revenge for the despair in their own lives and fortunes. Don't expect coherent or rational thinking of such people; the logic operates according to its own internal mental constraints.
If this was not drugged out teenagers who should be locked up for about 20 years, what groups of people have a track record of premeditate wanton destruction of property in forests? Help me ole wise one!
Deep ecologists, maybe of the VHEMT (voluntary human extinction movement) variety.
How could he tell?
Cool - talk about your 3'rd century AD headlines! When was the last time the Vandals did any serious pillaging? 1500 years ago? Now all we need are some Goths - the Visigoths, a couple of Ostragoths, and maybe some Huns, a few Vikings...
Crater Lake is celebrating 150 (I believe) years as a national park. They are going to remove the consession buildings from the lake's edge to help that body of water maintain it's clarity.
I like riding my bicycle around the 22 mile rim road when I am there. It is a spectacular place.
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