No, Hunters Did Not Open Fire on Australian Firefighters In Washington State

Authored by klcc.org and submitted by Longlius

An Australian newspaper is reporting that hunters shot at two firefighters from down under while they were battling the Miriam Fire near White Pass, Washington, but law enforcement has debunked the claim.

According to a story in the Sydney Morning Herald, the shooting resulted in two arrests and drew attention from Australia’s Foreign Affairs Department and the FBI. Yakima County Sheriff's office Spokesman Casey Schilperoort says none of it is true.

“When the state patrol and our deputies arrived, they received more information from the firefighters, it was determined there were two males hunting in the area for bears,” he said. “Both hunters were contacted and they stated they had been shooting at the bear, but they missed multiple times.”

Schilperoort said officers determined no one was being shot at intentionally. The hunters’ intentions, however, have raised eyebrows.

“When this call came out, I found it very weird that a hunter would be that opportunistic to be hunting in an area where the fire was at,” said Schillperoort.

The U.S. Forest Service issued citations to the hunters for violating a closure order.

sambull on September 11st, 2018 at 15:11 UTC »

Sounds like actual gun fire one time the sheriffs department was pinned down in my backyard by what they thought was kids shooting bb guns at them (neighbor called about kids shooting at his windows), helicopters out 20 officers for 3 hours... never found the suspect. I did the next morning, turns out we had seed pods on a tree int he backyard that would curl and sling a damn seed 40 feet away at like 90fps they actually hurt when they hit you.

tl;dr: seed pods suppressed sheriffs department for 3 hours

OMGWTFBBQUE on September 11st, 2018 at 14:09 UTC »

So all this article did was make me skeptical of both sides of the story. Was there really a forest fire? Does Australia even exist?

kiwidude4 on September 11st, 2018 at 13:43 UTC »

I think we all just need to wait a week for people to figure out what the hell was actually going on.