The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is tripling the number of homicide detectives investigating the biggest fire in county history.
About 10 detectives will be added this weekend to the four already working the case, Lieutenant Liam Gallagher said in an interview.
“We are in the very early stages and we’re working around the clock,” Gallagher said.
Officials are keeping mum on their evidence to avoid alerting the people who set the blaze that led to the death of two firefighters. Besides the homicide unit, arson investigators from the Sheriff’s Department and the U.S. Forest Service are also participating.
The so-called Station fire, which began on Aug. 26, has injured eight people and burned 148,258 acres, an area the size of Chicago. It has destroyed 141 structures, including 64 homes, and was 42 percent contained as of yesterday morning. The Forest Service expects it to be under control by Sept. 15.
The fire’s name comes from its origination near a ranger station at the entrance to the Angeles National Forest near the suburb of La Canada Flintridge.
Materials used to start or accelerate flames were found at the site, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing an unidentified person close to the investigation.
By naming arson as the cause, investigators are signaling they probably have either physical evidence such as gasoline cans or eyewitness testimony, said Glenn Corbett, a professor of fire science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, which is part of the City University of New York.
If containers for gasoline or other flammable materials were found at the scene, investigators will try to determine where they were made and sold, Corbett said.
“There is something that they have that pointed them in that direction,” said Corbett. “There are incidents where people start a fire with a lighter and then there is nothing left behind except footprints.”
Those who first discovered the fire will be interviewed because they may be potential suspects or they may be able to identify who started it, Corbett said.
Investigators will study details such as how the fire grew and which sides of trees burned, said Jerry Naylis, a former president of International Association of Arson Investigators.
Seemingly insignificant observations, such as a car sighting, can help tie suspects to a fire, Naylis said.
“The least little tip can sometimes lead us in the right direction,” Naylis said.
A state of emergency has been declared in Los Angeles, Mariposa, Monterey, Placer and San Bernardino counties because of blazes in California.
Some people set fires for vanity and report it so they can get credit for helping to put it out, Corbett said.
“They’re going to look at all these possibilities,” Corbett said of investigators. “They’re not going to rule out anybody.”
People start fires for reasons ranging from profit to revenge, Corbett said. The profit motive probably doesn’t fit this case because the blaze started in a public area, he said.
In one of the most notorious cases, Terry Barton, a federal forestry official, admitted setting the June 2002 Hayman fire near Denver, the largest in Colorado history, the Associated Press reported.
Barton said she lit a fire to burn a letter from her estranged husband, in an area where fires were banned because of drought, according to the Denver Post. She served about five years in prison, according to a Rocky Mountain News report.
That blaze burned 138,000 acres, destroyed 133 homes and forced 8,000 people to evacuate, the Post reported.
Some people set fires because problems in relationships lead them to seek to injure a former lover, families or communities, Corbett said.
“They have some kind of problem, some kind of mental health issue,” Corbett said. “Kids, even adults, act out because they are frustrated for some reason.”
