The 2014 King Fire was a large wildfire in El Dorado County, California, which burned 97,717 acres (39,545 hectares) primarily in the Eldorado National Forest.

[6] It was ignited by an act of arson along King of the Mountain Road—from which the fire got its name—in Pollock Pines, a small community along U.S. Route 50 in the western Sierra Nevada between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe.

[8] A handcrew of ten inmates and a fire captain were saved from being overrun when they were led to safety by a helicopter that was staged at the nearby Swansboro Country Airport.

[4] California governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in El Dorado County, citing the fire's threat to water and power infrastructure.

[6] The firefighters first on scene detected multiple points of origin for the King Fire, leading the El Dorado County District Attorney’s Office to swiftly conclude that arson had been the cause.

Within days, witnesses came forward and disclosed that they had encountered Wayne Huntsman, a Pollock Pines resident and former inmate firefighter, near the scene of the fire's origin.

[6] The King Fire produced copious amounts of smoke, pushing parts of Placer, El Dorado, Nevada, and Amador counties into unhealthy-to-hazardous ranges of PM2.5 air pollution.