UNITED STATES
DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

At about 4:15 p.m. on February 9, 2004, Employee #1 was burning brush piles with a five-gallon metal bucket of diesel fuel, using a propane torch. He set the fuel bucket up hill from the burning brush, and, as he was watching the brush fire burn, he noticed that the dried grass in the path of fuel bucket also caught fire. Employee #1 then rushed to retrieve the fuel bucket, but, by then, the fire already reached the bucket. When he grabbed the melting hot plastic cover of the bucket handle, he dropped the bucket and caused a splash of hot diesel fuel to ignite his clothing. He then ran up the hill shredded his burning clothes and rolled on the ground to suffocate the rest of his burning clothes. Employee #1 and his companion, not an employee of the Circle W Ranch, got into his car and drove to the North Fork Clinic and later to the Oakhurst Community Medical Center, where he was transported via helicopter to the Burn Center at UMC in Fresno, California. Employee #1 died on February 18, 2004. The Madera County Coroner's Office reported the cause of death as a bilateral bronchopneumonia due to 30% to 40%-body burns.