State joins suit against firm in 2011 Bastrop fire
Paxton, parks agency claim negligence led to huge Bastrop blaze.
Attorney General Ken Paxton and Texas parks department join lawsuit that blames a treetrimming company in the wildfire.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department on Friday joined hundreds of other people in suing a tree-trimming company they blame for the 2011 fire that ravaged Bastrop State Park and Bastrop County.
Asplundh Tree Expert Co., the lawsuit argues, diverted crews away from tree-trimming along the power lines it was responsible for clearing and put them on more profitable jobs, even as drought conditions reached historic proportions.
“Nothing can be done to erase what happened, but Asplundh should have to contribute to the recovery,” says the lawsuit filed Friday in the state District Court in Bastrop.
Phone calls to multiple Asplundh offices in Texas and Pennsylvania went unanswered Friday.
The fire, the most destructive in Texas history, raged after trees falling on power lines started two fires Sept. 4, 2011, just west of Texas 21 and near Schwantz Ranch Road. The fires merged near Cardinal Drive and swept south, killing two people, destroying 1,700 homes and burning 34,000 acres.
Paxton’s suit piggybacks on a Bastrop County state District Court case filed last year by nearly 300 owners of fire-damaged property, who originally fought to be recognized as a class-action suit in 2012. Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative, who owned the power lines, also sued Asplundh in 2013 after more than 60 homeowners and insurance companies sued Bluebonnet. The electric company settled with homeowners in 2014.
The Paxton lawsuit, which seeks at least $1 million in damages, waxes poetic about the trees lost and the destruction to the endangered Houston toad population.
“The westernmost pocket of loblolly pines in the United States thrived for thousands of years in the sandy soil of Bastrop County,” it begins. “Cut off from the piney woods of East Texas by a glacier millennia ago, these ‘lost pines’ developed unique genetic characteristics to adapt to the local climate and conditions. Other flora and fauna flourished . ... All that
changed in September 2011.”
The fire destroyed trees covering 91 percent of Bastrop State Park’s woodlands
and has led to a drop in sightings of the Houston toad and
other wildlife, according to the suit. The reason for the destruc
tion,it says, can be found in the property owners’ lawsuit. In a sixth amended petition for that suit filed last Febru- ary, the owners say Asplundh misled Bluebonnet about its
intent to finish the line-clear- ing work. The tree-trimming company assured the utility it would dedicate extra people to finish, even as it fell
behind, the lawsuit alleges. Meanwhile, Asplundh removed hourly workers on the relevant line to go work on other sites for other customers, according to the filing. It left in place workers who operated under a fixed-price agreement.
“Had Asplundh’s hourly crews remained (on the line) they would have reached the Blackjack Oak on Schwantz Ranch Road,” the lawsuit says. After a 2009 fire, Blue
bonnet hired Asplundh to review its vegetation management practices. But, according to the lawsuit, the com
pany, which was wooing Bluebonnet for the clear
ing contract, didn’t give an honest assessment of Bluebonnet’s practices.
That lawsuit is pending.