2 Abandoned Homes Burn in Suspicious Fires

Firefighters visited a Corona citrus grove twice in 14 hours Tuesday to extinguish blazes that destroyed two abandoned homes. The fires brought to at least eight the number of suspicious blazes in the city in the last two weeks.

That, said Corona fire inspector David Reed, is about as many structure fires as he is usually called upon to investigate in an entire year.

While firefighters doused the smoking remains of a small house that was set ablaze earlier in the afternoon, Reed surveyed the burned remains of two other, larger homes in the cluster of buildings in the Ducky Acres groves.

One had burned to the ground two weeks earlier. The other was destroyed early Tuesday morning, sending up clouds of smoke visible from much of Corona, a city of 40,000 in the northwest corner of Riverside County.

All three homes--and the lemon, orange and grapefruit trees surrounding them on a hillside in the southwest part of town--had been abandoned since last spring.

A former owner and the last resident of the property, Marjorie Snedecor of Corona, said the fires did not surprise her because the foreclosed grove and buildings have become a hangout for truant schoolchildren.

The groves were named Ducky Acres, she explained, for a small lake on the property that once attracted many ducks. Now the lake and a nearby well are dry, so firefighters had to drive off the property to fill their trucks with water to fight Tuesday’s fires.

“The place was so beat up prior to it burning,” Reed said of the larger house that burned Tuesday morning, “that I wouldn’t know what the value of something that damaged would be.”

A few small, tumbledown wooden buildings still stand in the Ducky Acres groves. Snedecor believes that they will soon fall prey to arsonists. “It makes you sick, this vandalism,” she said. “There’s no rhyme or reason to it.”

Initial evidence suggests that the three fires at Ducky Acres were, indeed, the work of vandals, Reed said, and probably were not related to the other recent fires in Corona buildings.

One of those fires, late Tuesday morning, burned the bathroom of a Texaco station at the busy intersection of West Grand Boulevard and West 6th Street, Reed said.

An attendant discovered the burned men’s room, which did not require action by the Fire Department. The $200 damage was confined to the restroom and was relatively minor--”just a little paint and a new toilet”--Reed said.

But the investigator believes that fire may be connected to another that he declined to discuss, saying that releasing any information could hinder his attempts to link the two incidents.

A more serious arson fire destroyed a home on West 10th Street last Thursday, nearly claiming the lives of a family of four sleeping inside. They escaped unharmed when a daughter, awakened by heat from the blaze, roused the rest of the Vasquez family.

Reed estimated damage from that fire at $65,000. He and investigators from the Riverside County arson unit believe an arsonist set the blaze on the front porch of the Vasquez house, Reed said.

A suspect has been identified and is being sought, he added.

Two more fires Sunday night left $7,000 in damage to the contents of an auto repair shop on West 6th Street, one of Corona’s primary commercial thoroughfares, Reed said.

A fire in the workshop and another in the office of H & H Lifetime Muffler and Radiator were started with a flammable liquid, Reed said.

While the fires were burning, Corona Police Lt. Larry Thayer said, the home of the shop’s owner was burglarized. A safe containing cash and jewelry was stolen, he said, accounting for most of the reported $19,000 loss.

“It seems like the incidents tie together,” Reed noted.

Reed said he has no reason to believe that all the recent fires can be attributed to an individual or group.