Arson Suspect Is Arrested in Silverado Fire

A 19-year-old Garden Grove man was arrested Friday and charged with setting last week’s fire that burned 5,000 acres of the Cleveland National Forest near Silverado Canyon in Orange County.

Robert E. Lowenberg was arrested by U.S. Forest Service investigators in Garden Grove at 6:30 p.m. He is charged with arson by setting federal wilderness on fire.

Forest Service investigators Friday night refused to say whether Lowenberg was the sole suspect in the fire, which took five days to contain.

After questioning, Lowenberg was taken to the federal prison at Terminal Island.

Investigators were led to Lowenberg by an informant, a Forest Service spokesman said. Investigators said they have no motive.

Tommy Lanier, the Forest Service special agent who is coordinating the team of investigators, declined to give out more details about Lowenberg because he said it would hinder the investigation.

Monday, Lowenberg is scheduled to appear before a federal magistrate, Lanier said. At that time Lowenberg will be formally charged and bail will be set.

The fire, which began Sept. 9, was deemed suspicious from the onset when residents of mountains above Silverado Canyon reported seeing two men in a dark blue Toyota pickup truck starting fires near Dead Man’s Corner.

The fire was eventually controlled Sunday at an estimated cost of $1.3 million. It took 1,108 firefighters to complete a 14-mile containment ring in the Coldwater Canyon area of the forest in Riverside County. The final toll: 5,000 acres destroyed.

Friday night, relatives of Lowenberg expressed shock at his arrest, with his grandmother, Mrs. Kenneth Lowenberg of Garden Grove, describing him as a “nice boy.”

She said her grandson, who once lived with her, attended Rancho Alamitos High School in Garden Grove but dropped out before graduating. He held a series of jobs, one of them as a clerk in an auto parts store, she said.

When asked whether her grandson is an outdoorsman, she said, “I didn’t think he ever went to the forest.”

The fire briefly threatened scattered homes in Silverado, Temescal and Bedford canyons, but then moved away from populated areas and stayed in dense brush.