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dan County attorney said officials had turned the case over to their insurer, which would hire a lawyer to represent them.
• Sheriff Terry Robbins has said firefighters searched the field before they started the fire.
• Firefighters set the blaze to protect several abandoned homes and nearby businesses in the 11-person town -- including the four beer stores that last year sold the equivalent of 4.3 million, 12-ounce cans of beer.
• The Oglala Sioux Tribe has filed a federal lawsuit seeking $500 million from the stores, their distributors and the global beer makers, arguing they knowingly contributed to devastating alcohol-related problems on the reservation.
• Blue Bird isn't involved in that lawsuit and said he doesn't blame the beer stores for his injuries, but activists who have tried to limit alcohol sales in Whiteclay said

such a case was inevitable, given the number of people who loiter around the stores and sleep in nearby fields.
• Duane Martin Sr., a leader of the Strong Heart Warrior Society on Pine Ridge, said he was outraged when he heard about the incident but not surprised. Martin said intoxicated tribe members often sleep in and around the abandoned houses, and he criticized the department for not checking the field more closely.
• "Isn't that what fire departments are trained to do?" Martin asked. "This is the type of problem I've been telling people about. It makes a lot of sense something like this would happen, because of the alcohol crisis in that place."
• Although firefighters set the fire in a field where intoxicated people have been known to pass out, Blue Bird said he hadn't been drinking.
• Blue Bird, a 51-year-old Army veteran who worked laying cinderblocks, branding cattle and fixing cars, said he went to Whiteclay to meet a friend and was walking through waist-high prairie grass in the unincorporated town when he dropped to one knee to tighten his bootlace, causing a muscle spasm that blasted pain through his lower back. He said he turned over and lay face-up in the grass, then sat up slowly to relieve the cramp.
• The fire swept over him before he realized what was happening, he said. Blue Bird said he rolled over on his stomach, inhaled, and covered his face with his hands. Flames scorched his eyebrows and mustache and singed the ponytail that reached halfway down his back.
• "I saw them, but they were moving so fast," he said. "It was really windy that day. Even if I had seen them and gotten up to run, they still would have gotten me."
• Weather records indicate wind speeds around Whiteclay varied from 11 mph to

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