A former elected D.C. official has been indicted on charges he caused one of the most destructive forest fires in Minnesota history, one that lasted two weeks and consumed nearly 120 square miles.
Federal prosecutors on Tuesday accused Stephen G. Posniak, of the District of Columbia, of setting fire to a trash can at a Ham Lake campsite in northern Minnesota, leaving without completely putting out the flames and then giving false statements to investigators.
The 2007 blaze swept across the U.S.-Canadian border, destroying 140 structures, causing more than $4 million in damage on the U.S. side and costing $11 million to put out, according to charging documents. The blaze blackened about 57 square miles of the Superior National Forest in Minnesota plus about 61 square miles across the border in Ontario.
Posniak, a 64-year-old retired computer programmer who still lives in the District, could face six years in prison. He has been summoned to appear before a federal judge in Minnesota on Nov. 6.
Mark Larson, Posniak’s attorney, said his client has known about the investigation for more than a year and has cooperated with authorities. Lawson declined to address the accusations, preferring instead “to address them once, and in the courtroom.”
Posniak, a former Tenleytown advisory neighborhood commissioner who served on-and-off during the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, could not be reached at his home Wednesday.
A family member told the St. Paul Pioneer-Press that Posniak’s ties to Minnesota go back to his graduate school days at the University of Minnesota.
Prosecutors alleged that Posniak started a paper trash fire on the morning of May 7, 2007, that spread to nearby timber, underbrush, grass and other flammable material.
He then left the fire without totally extinguishing it, allowing it to burn and spread beyond his control, prosecutors said.
When questioned by U.S. Forest Service officers, authorities said Posniak falsely claimed that he has camped at a different lake, not Ham Lake. He said he encountered the already out-of-control fire the following day while paddling through Ham Lake.
