{"id":119175,"date":"2014-07-09T22:24:06","date_gmt":"2014-07-10T04:24:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/200000-awarded-in-roatcap-wildfire\/"},"modified":"2014-07-09T22:24:06","modified_gmt":"2014-07-10T04:24:06","slug":"200000-awarded-in-roatcap-wildfire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/200000-awarded-in-roatcap-wildfire\/","title":{"rendered":"$200,000 awarded in Roatcap wildfire"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Lewis
Lewis Arriola firefighters stand by to protect a residence off Road 28 and P. 7 as flames erupt in the Roatcap Fire.<\/span>Sam Green\/Cortez Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

It took less than three minutes Monday for a district court judge to issue a $200,000 restitution order in connection to the 2012 Roatcap fire.<\/p>\n

Appearing before Judge Todd Plewe on Monday, June 30, the defendant, Roger Stratton, 55, of Dolores did not contest the restitution amount. More than half the money, $109,000, was awarded to the U.S. Forest Service.<\/p>\n

Last fall, Stratton pleaded guilty to starting a wildfire that scorched some 400 acres near Dolores on Oct. 24, 2012. He is currently on probation, which prohibits him from having any outdoor fire on his property.<\/p>\n

In addition to the U.S. Forest Service, court records reveal the State of Colorado was awarded restitution of more than $50,000; Bureau of Land Management, nearly $12,000; and Empire Electric, some $9,000. The remaining restitution was divided among three insurance companies and six private property owners.<\/p>\n

Solely dependent on Social Security benefits, Stratton isn\u2019t expected to pay off the total restitution any time soon, according to his public defender.<\/p>\n

At his plea hearing in November, Plewe placed Stratton on five years of supervised probation to ensure full restitution was made.<\/p>\n

Stratton, 55, of Road P.5 near Dolores, admitted to starting the fire on his property near Roatcap Hill that forced the evacuation of about 30 nearby residences. He pleaded guilty to both a single felony and lone misdemeanor count of fourth degree arson.<\/p>\n

tbaker@cortezjournal.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arsonist agrees to restitution order<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6363],"tags":[741,44,188,13,84],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-119175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ds-news","tag-arson","tag-dolores","tag-dolores-star","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-wildfire"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119175"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=119175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}