Planes Over the Wildfire

On rural property in northern California, a man lit a fire in a fire ring outside a trailer used as a methamphetamine laboratory, to boil water. The fire escaped and spread into the surrounding woodland. State firefighting aircraft were sent, and during the aerial attack an air tanker and another firefighting plane collided in mid-air, killing both pilots. He was convicted of recklessly causing a fire, with findings that it caused the pilots' deaths, along with drug-manufacturing offences. The defence argued that the deaths were caused by superseding events — errors or negligence by the pilots — and were not a foreseeable result of a fire started on the ground.