alk about a party foul.
A shotgun-toting man triggered Arizona’s biggest wildfire by shooting an incendiary round during a wild bachelor party, authorities said.
The devastating blaze — which has scorched 18,000 acres and caused more than $6 million in damages so far — was allegedly started in May during a boneheaded, pre-wedding shoot-off outside Phoenix.
And the suspected shooter faces just a slap on the wrist for starting the still-burning, 50-day inferno.
Court documents claim Steven Shiflet, 23, of Mesa, Ariz., was partying with four male buddies, including one who was married a week later, in the Sycamore Creek area on May 12, when they started firing several guns at targets.
According to an affidavit filed by Lucas Woolf, a special agent of the United States Forest Service, it was two hours into the shooting that Shiflet fired an “incendiary shotgun shell” from a Remington 12 gauge at a soda box, after which smoke started billowing from a nearby bush.
“The entire group ran over to where the smoke was and noticed fire, which they unsuccessfully attempted to stomp out,” Woolf wrote in the affidavit.
Woolf said that, according to one of the men present, “the fire grew extremely fast and it was at this time that they realized that they could not put it out so they called 911 and were instructed to leave the area by the 911 operator.”
When investigating the cause of the out-of-control blaze a week later, Woolf tracked down the owner of a GMC Yukon seen driving away from the scene carrying “five white males in their 20s.”
When quizzed about the fire, the truck’s owner, Tyler Pace, who attended the bachelor party for Bryan Reeder, allegedly said: “I think that we may have had something to do with that.”
Woolf then interviewed Shiflet, who remembered firing an “orange shotgun round” at a soda box, expecting the round to “shoot out flame or act like a flare gun,” according to the affidavit.
The shame-faced Shiflet then gave the Forest Service investigator the “exact same type of shotgun shell that he fired” on May 12 that triggered the hellish blaze.
A warning etched on the Fiocchi 12 gauge round’s packaging was explicit about its fiery menace: “Shoots 100 feet of fire, setting everything in its path ablaze. Warning: Extreme FIRE HAZARD,” reported The Smoking Gun website, which broke the story yesterday.
Shiflet, who is married, has cooperated with authorities, surrendering his fire-starting ammunition along with his Remington shotgun.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said he has been charged with carelessly or negligently placing an ignited substance that may cause a fire on national forest lands, firing incendiary ammunition, and causing timber, trees, slash, brush, or grass to burn on public forest land.
Despite the damage caused, Shiflet only faces a maximum $5,000 fine or six months in jail.
A spokeswoman for the Tonto National Forest, Paige Rockett, told The Daily that Shiflet may have escaped more serious charges because the incident occurred three days before a blanket ban on recreational shooting.
About 80 percent of the fire, the biggest in Arizona this season, has been contained, but costs will eventually exceed $6 million despite no structures being damaged, Rockett said.
“There’s the costs of the firefighting crews and other efforts to get it under control,” she said.
“At one stage more than 580 were trying to get it under control, as well as six helicopters and airtankers.”
Shiflet, who did not return messages left by The Daily, is scheduled to make an initial appearance in federal court in Phoenix on July 13.
