Vandals hit logging site: Damage close to $500,000 for Oregon firm

http://www.redding.com/redd/nw_local/article/0,2232,REDD_17533_5041493,00.html
>
> Vandals hit logging site
>
> Damage close to $500,000 for Oregon firm
>
> By Ryan Sabalow, Record Searchlight
> October 4, 2006
>
> HILT -- Vandals caused almost $500,000 damage to heavy equipment owned
> by a Medford, Ore., logging company near this rural Siskiyou County
> logging site -- an attack that may close the firm until at least next year.
>
> The attack "devastated" Hilltop Logging Inc., the firm that owned at
> least nine bulldozers, graders, front-end loaders and other machines
> that were damaged, apparently over the weekend, said Susan Gravenkamp,
> spokeswoman for the Siskiyou County Sheriff's Department.
>
>
> The company has about 20 employees, she said.
>
> Dirt and other debris were put into fuel and oil lines, belts and fuel
> lines were cut, computer systems were destroyed and gear linkages were
> sawed in half, she said.
>
> "They are going to have to do a lot of repairs on site," Gravenkamp
> said. "I'm sure they have insurance, but they'll be out of business for
> the rest of this year, certainly."
>
> Company owner Steve Avgeris told The Associated Press that his employees
> arrived at work Monday to find that the vehicles had been vandalized.
>
> He said it's likely the vandals had master keys to the equipment.
>
> The company was working on 150 acres of pine and Douglas fir west of
> Hilt, which is about 20 miles north of Yreka.
>
> The logging operation was on land owned by Fruit Growers Supply Co.
> There is no gate on the property and anyone could enter the site,
> Gravenkamp said.
>
> "They didn't just destroy some obscure business," Steve Avgeris' wife,
> Cheri, said. "They affected people's lives."
>
> The letters ELF, an acronym for the Earth Liberation Front
> environmentalist group, were written in dust on the equipment, Graven-
> kamp said.
>
> Gravenkamp said investigators are not yet ready to say radical
> environmentalists are responsible. She said the vandals could have been
> disgruntled employees, deer hunters or teenagers.
>
> Sheriff's detectives agreed.
>
> "We really don't have any reason to be looking in that direction (ELF)
> right now," sheriff's Detective Dave Amaral told The Associated Press on
> Monday. "It's not real consistent with what we've seen in the past."
>
> FBI spokeswoman Karen Ernst said an FBI agent from Redding has been
> working with Siskiyou County detectives on the case.
>
> In 2002, the FBI estimated that ELF and its sister organization, the
> Animal Liberation Front, committed more than 600 criminal acts in the
> U.S. since 1996, causing more than $34 million in damage.
>
> "Those numbers would be much higher now," Ernst said.
>
> ELF has been linked to several crimes in Northern California in recent
> years, including arson at a barn on Bureau of Land Management land near
> Susanville in 2001 and firebombs placed at construction sites in Placer
> County in 2005, Ernst said.