By Laura Zuckerman
Idaho Falls Post Register (Idaho)
Copyright 2006 The Post Register
All Rights Reserved
SALMON, Idaho — The former BLM firefighter who last week pleaded guilty to persuading a Salmon teenager to start a fire has been charged with three felony counts of arson stemming from several fires outside Salmon in 2003.
Levi Miller is accused of starting three fires along U.S. Highway 93 north of Salmon in July and August 2003, when he was working as a volunteer with the North Fork Fire Department, court documents indicate.
In a written statement submitted to Lemhi County sheriff’s deputies, the 22-year-old Salmon resident confessed to starting the blazes.
“I was bored and wanted to fight fires,” Miller wrote of the fires set along the 20-mile stretch between Salmon and North Fork. “I used charcoal baskets, incense with matches and a cigar with matches. I started the charcoal at my house (then near North Fork) and drove down the road with it in a can and then threw it out. Same with the other devices.”
It’s the latest legal trouble for Miller.
In August, Lemhi County Prosecutor Bruce Withers charged Miller, then a firefighter with the
U.S. Bureau of Land Management, with solicitation of arson for financial gain relating to an Aug. 13 fire on the western outskirts of Salmon.
At his arraignment hearing Friday before 7th District Judge James Herndon, Miller admitted he’d offered a teenage girl $100 to set the blaze in the Smedley Subdivision, hoping he could make more money as an hourly BLM employee.
Miller and two other firefighters with the 10-member BLM crew in Salmon were fired after county and federal officials launched investigations into the half-acre brush fire in the subdivision.
In a taped telephone conversation, Miller bragged to the teenager about setting fires the year he graduated from Salmon High School, which was 2003, saying it was ""fun and easy,"" court records show.
News of Miller’s guilty plea and the additional arson charges he is facing has shocked the region’s tight-knit firefighting community.
Rick Belger, fire management officer with the Idaho Falls District of the BLM, which oversees the fire program in Salmon, said Miller is the exception when it comes to those who routinely risk their lives to save people and property.
If convicted, Miller could face up to 10 years in prison for each of the three arson charges and a fine of up to $50,000 per count. He is scheduled to be sentenced in November for his role in the Smedley Subdivision fire. The felony carries a maximum penalty of 121/2 years behind bars and a fine of up to $25,000.