SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A man who originally pleaded not guilty to starting a massive fire two years ago has now admitted he ignited the blaze that burned 80 structures in Northern California. 
 
 Thirty-nine-year-old Wayne Allen Huntsman pleaded guilty Friday to three counts of felony arson in the September 2014 King Fire. 
 
 El Dorado County Superior Court Judge Daniel Proud sentenced Huntsman to 20 years in prison and ordered him to pay $60 million in restitution. 
 
 The King Fire burned 12 homes, 68 other structures and more than 150 square miles of land in the north-central Sierra Nevada mountains. It took 300 firefighters and personnel about a month to control. 
 
 Huntsman made a video of himself during the fire that District Attorney Vern Pierson says was an attempt to portray himself as a hero. ||||| The interactive transcript could not be loaded. 
 
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 A 37-year-old man was sentenced to 20 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to starting the 2014 King Fire, which burned a dozen homes and nearly 100,000 acres east of Placerville in the central Sierra. 
 
 The case against Wayne Allen Huntsman of Pollock Pines (El Dorado County) was nailed down in part because of a selfie video that Huntsman made at the fire’s origin, the El Dorado County district attorney’s office said Friday. 
 
 In the video, recorded Sept. 13, 2014, Huntsman is standing in a forested area between two separately lit blazes, which prosecutors construed as a sign that the fire was intentionally set. Although Huntsman says on his video, “I’m stuck in the middle,” he smiles and does not appear to be fearing for his safety. 
 
 A retired firefighter picked up Huntsman after the blaze began. He saw Huntsman’s selfie and recorded it on his own phone, then turned over his video to law enforcement officials, who arrested Huntsman four days later. 
 
 Huntsman was also caught on surveillance video, after starting the fire, stealing liquor from a local grocery store, prosecutors said. 
 
 The fast-moving inferno burned for nearly a month across 97,717 acres of mostly mountainous terrain along Highway 50 in the El Dorado National Forest. Thousands were forced to evacuate. Damages were estimated in the tens of millions. 
 
 Huntsman is originally from the Santa Cruz area, but he moved to Pollock Pines in June 2013 for work, family members told The Chronicle. He was doing odd jobs, mostly home remodeling and landscaping, and living with his girlfriend. 
 
 Huntsman has a criminal record that includes convictions for assault with a deadly weapon and grand theft in Santa Cruz County in 1997, public records show. None of his earlier crimes related to arson. 
 
 Superior Court Judge Daniel Proud sentenced Huntsman to the maximum allowed for three counts of arson with multiple enhancements for causing injury to firefighters and destroying structures, according to the district attorney’s office. 
 
 Huntsman was also ordered to pay $60 million in restitution. 
 
 Kurtis Alexander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander
– A man who took a video of himself after starting a fire that would go on to burn more than 150 square miles of land was sentenced to 20 years in prison and a $60 million fine, the AP reports. According to Reuters, Wayne Huntsman pleaded guilty to three counts of arson Friday for starting the 2014 King Fire in Northern California that took hundreds of firefighters a month to get under control. His sentence was increased because a number of firefighters were injured and 12 homes and dozens of other structures were destroyed. Thousands of residents were displaced by the fire. Huntsman originally pleaded not guilty to the charges. In September 2014, a retired firefighter picked Huntsman up escaping the area of the blaze, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Huntsman showed the man a video of himself standing between two fires. "Listen, I got fire all around me," Huntsman says in the video. "I'm stuck in the middle, babe." The man made a recording of the video and turned it over to the authorities, who arrested Huntsman within days. The DA says Huntsman was trying to look like a hero in the video, but it appeared the fires were purposefully set because there were two of them and Huntsman seemed to be enjoying himself. Meanwhile, Huntsman's sister is accused of killing two young children, whose bodies were found in a storage locker in Redding, California, according to SFist.