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--> --> Arsonists hit three trucks at timber sale ESTACADA (AP) - Three logging trucks were torched early today near a federal forest where environmental protesters have camped out to try to keep loggers from cutting down trees. Federal agents, state troopers, a bomb squad and sheriff's deputies went to the logging company to investigate. Three unexploded incendiary devices were found there. No one was injured in the early morning blaze, officials said. Loggers planned to start harvesting trees at the Eagle Creek timber sale in the Mount Hood National Forest today, and activists have vowed to try to stop them. An employee of Ray A. Schoppert Logging Inc. spotted the fires and reported them at 2:40 a.m., said Angela Blanchard, Clackamas County sheriff's spokeswoman. One of the trucks was destroyed and two others parked alongside were damaged. The trucks were valued at about $50,000 apiece, Blanchard said. The company that owns the trucks is under contract to Vanport Manufacturing Co. of Boring, which was awarded the 1,030-acre Eagle Creek timber sale in the Mount Hood National Forest in 1996. The mountain area is on the west slope of the Cascade Range about 50 miles southeast of Portland. Adolf Hertrich, Vanport president, said the company had no warning and no one has claimed responsibility for the fire. Simple incendiary devices were planted under the six log trucks parked in a rural area near the timber sale but only one ignited, said John McMahon, spokesman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. "One functioned as it was designed to. The others didn't function as they were designed to," McMahon said. The incendiary devices consisted of milk jugs filled with a flammable liquid, TV news reports said. Federal agents were investigating but no other details were immediately released. For the past two years, environmentalists have been trying to prevent logging at the site in the Mount Hood National Forest, including a handful of protesters who have been living in tree "pods" - aerial platforms strung between trees. Donald Fontenot of the Cascadia Forest Alliance, which has organized much of the longtime protest, said the arson will only distract attention from environmental issues. "The torching of the trucks strays from what is really important, which is the protection of the watershed," Fontenot said. Environmentalists say logging harms the Eagle Creek watershed, which supplies drinking water to 185,000 people in Portland, West Linn, Lake Oswego and Oregon City. They also say logging could harm rare plants and animals and will destroy centuries-old trees. Fontenot said protesters will remain in the area. Email your... Technical questions & comments to: WebMaster Daily Tidings editorial comments & questions to: Editor Visit our other Oregon Newspapers... | Albany Democrat-Herald | Ashland Daily Tidings | Corvallis Gazette-Times | | Lebanon Express | Newport News-Times | Springfield News | Cottage Grove Sentinel | Ashland Daily Tidings 1661 Siskiyou Blvd. Ashland, OR 97520 Telephone 541-482-3456 © Copyright 2001 Lee Northwest Publishing