Matt Buchanan Legal Fees; Birdhouse Fire

Its true, "In this family, no one fights alone"!

My brother, Matt Buchanan, is facing charges of 2nd degree reckless burning. This all started back on June 4th. Matt had purchased a new house a couple of days before. He and his girlfriend, had spent the first two days working hard on cleaning up the outside of their new home. Stephanie had gotten stung by hornets a couple of times. Matt located the nest in one of many of the bird houses left by the prior property owner. He used some bee killer to no avail. He decided to go ahead and burn them out. He put a couple of paper towels in the birdhouse, lit it on fire and ran! A short time later, he took the garden hose and extinguished the fire. During the time that the birdhouse was on fire, a neighbor from across the valley spotted the flame and was concerned that there could be a house fire. (From her view, the fire would have lined up with a picture window in Matt's living room).  The fire was around 9:45PM. After putting the fire out (completely), Matt and Steph went into the house and eventually to bed for the night. They were awoken around midnight to sirens, lights, flashlights shining in their bedroom, people pounding on the door and windows. (You can hear his full account on the link here): https://mynorthwest.com/1501202/dori-centralia-birdhouse-fire/... (apparently, the neighbor eventually called it in, just to make sure that everything was ok and there was no fire in the house).  In all, 11 firefighters and 4 police officers responded (City of Centralia officers and Lewis County Sherriff's office). Matt lives out of the city on six acres, so the LCSO had jurisdiction. 

Ultimately, an officer with the Lewis County Sherriff office issued Matt a citation for 2nd degree reckless burning, stating that it was irresponsible of him to set fire to the bird house in order to extinguish the hornets. This came with a mandatory court appearance. At first, everyone got a good laugh out of this, knowing that once he showed up to court, it would get tossed out. Not the case. Not at all!

So far, Matt has used a substantial amount of his vacation from work to deal with this. He has had 4 court appearances. If convicted of the charge, the maximum penalty is 364 days in jail and a $10,000 fine. The Lewis County prosecutors office has offered him a plea deal where he would be on "probation" for six months, and possibly pay a fine or court fees (this is not clear at this point). 

Yesterday, he was interviewed by Dori Monson with KIRO radio. The support from family, friends and strangers has been overwhelming. Matt knew that he could not afford to hire an attorney to fight this so he had accepted the idea that he would agree to the plea. Today, he has a renewed energy to fight this injustice, to make a stand and set a good example for his children... You don't have to back down a bully! 

His next court date is Wednesday, Sept 11th. He has found an attorney that is eager to take his case but they estimate the cost at $5,000. Let's hurry up and rally to help raise the money for Matt! 

He was very reluctant to accept financial help on this, but some good friends have encouraged him by saying, "someone has to take a stand"!