Vandals hit logging site

Damage close to $500,000 for Oregon firm

By Ryan Sabalow, Record Searchlight
October 4, 2006

HILT -- Vandals caused almost $500,000 damage to heavy equipment owned by a Medford, Ore., logging company near this rural Siskiyou County logging site -- an attack that may close the firm until at least next year.

The attack "devastated" Hilltop Logging Inc., the firm that owned at least nine bulldozers, graders, front-end loaders and other machines that were damaged, apparently over the weekend, said Susan Gravenkamp, spokeswoman for the Siskiyou County Sheriff's Department.

The company has about 20 employees, she said.

Dirt and other debris were put into fuel and oil lines, belts and fuel lines were cut, computer systems were destroyed and gear linkages were sawed in half, she said.

"They are going to have to do a lot of repairs on site," Gravenkamp said. "I'm sure they have insurance, but they'll be out of business for the rest of this year, certainly."

Company owner Steve Avgeris told The Associated Press that his employees arrived at work Monday to find that the vehicles had been vandalized.

He said it's likely the vandals had master keys to the equipment.

The company was working on 150 acres of pine and Douglas fir west of Hilt, which is about 20 miles north of Yreka.

The logging operation was on land owned by Fruit Growers Supply Co. There is no gate on the property and anyone could enter the site, Gravenkamp said.

"They didn't just destroy some obscure business," Steve Avgeris' wife, Cheri, said. "They affected people's lives."

The letters ELF, an acronym for the Earth Liberation Front environmentalist group, were written in dust on the equipment, Graven- kamp said.

Gravenkamp said investigators are not yet ready to say radical environmentalists are responsible. She said the vandals could have been disgruntled employees, deer hunters or teenagers.

Sheriff's detectives agreed.

"We really don't have any reason to be looking in that direction (ELF) right now," sheriff's Detective Dave Amaral told The Associated Press on Monday. "It's not real consistent with what we've seen in the past."

FBI spokeswoman Karen Ernst said an FBI agent from Redding has been working with Siskiyou County detectives on the case.

In 2002, the FBI estimated that ELF and its sister organization, the Animal Liberation Front, committed more than 600 criminal acts in the U.S. since 1996, causing more than $34 million in damage.

"Those numbers would be much higher now," Ernst said.

ELF has been linked to several crimes in Northern California in recent years, including arson at a barn on Bureau of Land Management land near Susanville in 2001 and firebombs placed at construction sites in Placer County in 2005, Ernst said.

The Associated Press contributed to this story. Reporter Ryan Sabalow can be reached at 225-8344 or at rsabalow@redding.com.