USA: California still looking for arsonists who started deadly blaze

Fire crews desperately continued to protect homes from a raging California wildfire Friday (October 27). The fire has claimed the lives of four firefighters. Investigators believe an arsonist started the massive blaze early Thursday (October 26). It has now scorched close to 9,700 hectares of the Southern California landscape and has destroyed 10 structures including five homes. At a press conference Friday, Jeanne Wade Evans, the Forest Supervisor of the San Bernadino National Forest, described the death of the four firefighters and the critical injury of a fifth as a "tragedy" and "great loss". "They were engaging in structure protection and fire fighting activities when they were over run by flames. The accident investigation is ongoing. Our very deepest condolences go out to the families and friends at this very tragic time. All of us here on the forest and all of us in this community are suffering a great loss today," she said. More than 1,000 firefighters worked through the night despite an acrid blanket of thick smoke covering the fire zone, 90 miles (145 km) east of Los Angeles and 17 miles (27 km) northwest of Palm Springs. Weather forecasters expected another day of gusting, hot Santa Ana winds throughout southern California. In Orange County, 140 people were evacuated at daybreak from a campground in the Cleveland National Forest after a small brush fire broke out there. Riverside County fire officials said the blaze near Palm Springs was deliberately set and a $100,000 reward has been offered for information about the perpetrators. They gave no details about why they consider it an arson fire. The Los Angeles Times on Friday quoted people as saying they had seen teenagers smoking marijuana around midnight Thursday near where the fire is thought to have started. The blaze was the deadliest for the firefighting community since 2001, when four firefighters were killed in Washington state. But it has yet to wreak the destruction of October 2003, when wildfires burned for days in mountains outside Los Angeles and near San Diego, killing 24 people, destroying more than 3,000 homes and burning some 740,000 acres.

ITN Source | October 28, 2006

Tags:. .acres. .ana. .arson. .arsonist. .arsonists