{"id":411230,"date":"2026-07-24T21:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T21:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/411230\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T21:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T21:18:09","slug":"man-found-guilty-of-starting-2024-park-fire-one-of-californias-largest-wildfires-on-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/411230\/","title":{"rendered":"Man found guilty of starting 2024 Park Fire, one of California&#8217;s largest wildfires on record"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Butte County jury found Ronnie Dean Stout II guilty Friday of starting the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/sacramento\/pictures\/in-photos-park-fire-in-northern-california\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Park Fire<\/a> in Northern California, exactly two years after the massive wildfire ignited.<\/p>\n<p>Prosecutors said the fire began shortly before 3 p.m. on July 24, 2024, when Stout pushed a burning vehicle down an embankment near Alligator Hole in Chico&#8217;s Upper Bidwell Park, igniting nearby vegetation.<\/p>\n<p>Stout maintained that the vehicle caught fire accidentally after becoming stuck in grass and denied pushing it into the gully.<\/p>\n<p>The fire ultimately burned 429,603 acres across Butte and Tehama counties, making it California&#8217;s fourth-largest wildfire <a href=\"https:\/\/34c031f8-c9fd-4018-8c5a-4159cdff6b0d-cdn-endpoint.azureedge.net\/-\/media\/calfire-website\/our-impact\/fire-statistics\/top-20-largest-ca-wildfires.pdf?rev=fba7bfc52eab4d5d87fbee5bd9416ed8&amp;hash=270E810A7FCF091122EE2A18EB24ACB6\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">on record<\/a> by acreage.<\/p>\n<p>Cal Fire&#8217;s numbers show that the Park Fire destroyed 713 structures and damaged 57 others, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/sacramento\/news\/park-fire-butte-county-updates\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">with hundreds of those structures being homes<\/a>. It also forced widespread evacuations and temporarily closed Lassen Volcanic National Park.<\/p>\n<p>Butte County courts confirmed that Stout had been found guilty of arson of forest land in the case on Friday.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Prosecutors previously said Stout could face 25 years to life in prison if the conviction is treated as his third strike under California law.<\/p>\n<p>\n          More from CBS News\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"content__tags__label\">In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Butte County jury found Ronnie Dean Stout II guilty Friday of starting the Park Fire in Northern&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[19786,3936,60059,121,123,122],"class_list":["post-411230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-butte-county","tag-california-wildfires","tag-chico","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}