More than 100 parties filed a lawsuit Monday against the federal government, seeking $108 million for damages resulting from the Hanford fire of 2000.

The suit also charges that the fire is responsible for two deaths -- the first time such allegations have surfaced publicly.

Robert Pierce, a Hanford worker who was trapped in his Benton City home when it was surrounded by fire, suffered severe burns and died of heart failure in January 2002.

Abigail Kimberly Grace Bevan-Church, born shortly after her mother survived the fire, died within hours from complications that lawyers will try to prove were caused by fire-related stress.

"It gives us -- I mean all of us -- the opportunity to perhaps prove that people should be more valuable than sagebrush in government policy," said Irene Peck-Neasham, 64, of Benton City, whose home was destroyed by the blaze.

Jerry Rose, a Benton City survivor whose home was spared, said the suit isn't about money -- at least not for him.

"No, not at all," Rose said. "This is about changing policy. The only way they recognize something is wrong is when a big lawsuit hits them in the face."

He has neighbors, however, who lost everything and had no insurance. "(They) need to have some financial gain out of this," he said.

The straightforward language of the suit filed Monday belies what promises to be an emotional and intriguing jury trial as residents try to hold the government responsible for alleged shoddy land management and misguided fire suppression efforts.

"The federal government is not exempt from the same obligations as any other landowner in Benton County," said Max Benitz Jr., a Benton County commissioner and Prosser-area rancher. "The federal government should be held accountable for its lack of action."

The lawsuit is a culmination of about two years of work by a team of lawyers from Seattle, Spokane and Kennewick. They represent Benton City residents who were burned out by the 163,000-acre blaze, insurance companies that made payments for fire damage, Benton County and others.

"As a direct result of (federal agencies) having negligently failed to establish and maintain firebreaks, and negligently allowed an abundance of fuel and vegetation creating a known fire hazard to accumulate ... a fire occurred on and over the neglected firebreak area," said the complaint, filed in federal District Court in Richland.

"The defendant United States in responding to the initial fire report failed or refused to act reasonably ... to adequately prevent the fire from spreading eventually onto and over plaintiffs' property," the document said.

A similar suit already is working through the federal court in Richland, where rancher Richard McWhorter is seeking to recover a reported $284,000 in fire damages from the government. Judge Robert Whaley is considering a motion to dismiss the case that was filed Aug. 20 by Fluor Hanford, a court clerk said.

Kennewick lawyer Jay Flynn announced the newest lawsuit in May, then gave the Department of Energy and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service the required 180 days to respond to his claim for damages before filing it with the court. He said the government has not sought a settlement.

However, the Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages much of the burned land, has spent about $6 million replanting sagebrush and native grasses across the western edge of the Hanford Reach National Monument. That effort, one of the largest fire restoration efforts in the nation, has generated substantial animosity among the plaintiffs.

"The Department of Energy hasn't even offered an apology to the people who lost their homes," said Benitz, whose county is seeking to recoup about $35,000 in fire-related expenses. "That costs 37 cents and they haven't done that. But (the government) will spend $6 million and God only knows how much more to restore the Hanford lands."

Flynn is angered that agency documents seem to show more concern for plants and animals than they do for the displaced people and burned homes -- none of which, he said, have received the slightest acknowledgment.

"The bushytail woodrat gets more talk than any people in Benton City," he said. "I have got people who lost entire homes and their lives."

DOE's Richland Office and a Spokane lawyer for the Fish and Wildlife Service declined comment, saying they had not seen the suit and could not discuss pending litigation.

At issue are the government's fire management efforts before and during what became known as the 24 Command Fire. It started June 27, 2000, when a Mattawa woman ran head-on into a semi-truck on Highway 24 near the intersection with Highway 240.

The crash sparked a fire that burned through dry grass on both sides of Highway 24. By the time it was extinguished July 1, flames had destroyed 10 homes and burned 256 square miles.

"I still can't go back there without trauma," said Peck-Neasham, who lives in Benton City but sold the property that she fled from just before it was consumed by flames.

"I don't believe in the word closure," she said. "There is no such thing. Every time a fire burns, you remember."

Flynn's suit is expected to rely heavily on an accident investigation published in October 2000 by the federal government, which says agencies had not completely burned off vegetation along highways 24 and 240 since 1995. Controlled burning of roadside vegetation is a recognized method for reducing flammable brush and reducing the chance that a spark will cause a major fire.

"Maintenance of this barrier may have prevented the fire that started on the highway from igniting the natural vegetation on the Arid Lands Ecology reserve," the investigation said.

DOE officials said in 2000 that firebreaks might not have stopped the fire, nor would other changes and improvements recommended by the investigation report.

"There were no findings that concern lack of performance of the organization," said Keith Benguiat, division director of engineering, safety and standards at DOE's Richland office in November 2000. "There were no incidents of misdirecting people. As fast as you could get people, we deployed them. We did what we could with the resources that were available."

The federal government recognized the need for the firebreaks after a massive fire in 1984, when it agreed with a group of Rattlesnake Mountain ranchers on a program for keeping fire from spreading. But that program appears to have evaporated in 1995 along major roads.

However, DOE continued to maintain firebreaks around Hanford buildings, an effort the fire investigation ruled an unqualified success -- and which Flynn will use as evidence that the government failed to take actions it knew could have contained the massive blaze of 2000.