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Man caught living for 8 years among half-ton of trash in national forest, feds say
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2026
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He'd accumulated this pile during 2 years at this site, so he's left similar messes in several other places. And he's got a long history of careless fires, like leaving them burning, even at the height of fire season. And he's got an SUV, so it's not like he couldn't have taken his trash out.
"The trash consisted of tires, plastic bags. trash bags, aluminum cans and other items of trash. I observed a canopy structure for his sport utility vehicle. The canopy structure was being utilized as a car port.”
Gatz, who is 65 years-old, according to public records, also had a fireplace with “active embers and a cooking station with 10-12 frying pans,” as well as “[d]ebris [that] consisted of three ladders, six to eight totes overfilled with debris… five black 55-gallon drums… eight tires, four bike frames, five gallons of motor oil, plywood, and other miscellaneous lumber around the campsite,”
That's not necessary stuff, it's a wildfire waiting to happen.
Actually, a lot of that sounds pretty practical.
The barrels would work as slow burn barrels for long term heat on cold nights, the bike parts could be a source of income (part bikes > full bikes to sell), more than 2 pans seems too many, but he may go through them fast if used over an open fire (depending on the type of pan), for millennia campers kept fires buring over night or for days to make cooking later easier (yes it's risky in some situations, but practical in general), and covering his car would ensure it looked cleaner and required lower maintenance (both have a lot of perks for a homeless person trying to live cheaply and fly under the radar). I'm not sure about the tires, but keeping cans and some other materials can def provide a source of income.
Nothing is ever really disposable, except the abusive people in your life. We could all benefit from less of those. Everything else is reusable or recyclable. Just listing this guys possessions without explanations for them makes them easy to dismiss as trash, but that isn't necessarily even close to honest. He likely had some actual waste on site from food prep or completed projects, but by no means was all his stuff trash.
Still a fire hazard. No open flames are supposed to be burning during high fire danger alerts and leaving an open fire burning unattended is taboo anytime, since we now have reliable means of starting a fire when needed. Climate change has made wildfires worse but even in the Old West they were a frequent cause of death.
Did you know that at the current rate of increase in homelessness, half the country will be homeless in ten years? The fastest growing demographics are people over 50, children without families and Latino/Hispanic populations.
Half the country is 115 million people. This is going to keep happening at a larger scale. Shelters are full.
On one small good, the fastest shrinking homeless populations are veterans and children with families