Vigilant Canyon Residents Keep Eye Out for Arson

Under cloudless skies and unbroken heat, the people of tinder-dry Topanga Canyon are on constant alert against the peril of an arsonist’s match.

But a fourth straight summer of drought is taking a toll on the guardians of the San Fernando Valley’s back country.

On a recent breezy afternoon, as a suspicious, 119-acre blaze raged near homes in nearby Thousand Oaks, Arson Watch leader Allen Emerson sat in a stuffy room at the rear of his hillside house in Topanga, juggling two phone lines and a two-way radio.

“Today will be the 18th time I’ve put out patrols this year,” Emerson said. “We’re only half-way through the year and we haven’t gotten to what they call the ‘fire season.’ ”

Normally, the Arson Watch volunteers, a diverse group of 200 professors, plumbers, artists and retirees, would go out 20 to 25 times a year, looking for fires or anyone who might set them. This year, the weekday volunteers are getting so tired Emerson has to lean on weekend folks to relieve them. He knows the strain: Emerson has put in 146 hours on the Arson Watch network since April.

“Let me know when you want me to send you a replacement,” he radioed a weary volunteer patrolling the sunbaked back roads.

“Whenever you can,” came the response. “I’m hotter than hell. I’m dying up here.”

“I hope they aren’t getting burned out,” he said. “I think about that.”

Arson Watch is a program begun in 1982 by actor Buddy Ebsen and his daughter, Cathy, after a fire nearly destroyed their ranch in Liberty Canyon. Under the auspices of the Sheriff’s Department’s volunteer special programs division, it uses volunteers in a sort of roving version of the successful crime-fighting Neighborhood Watch program.

As they patrol, volunteers jot down license plate numbers of unfamiliar cars and note vehicles parked along isolated lanes. They carry binoculars, first aid equipment, water, gloves and shovels, plus the all-important log that serves as the “eyes and ears” of the Los Angeles County fire and sheriff’s departments. The log documents what people and cars were in an area at any given time, so that if a fire starts, potential suspects or witnesses are known.

Devastating arsons like the ones that torched Glendale and Santa Barbara two weeks ago help rekindle interest in programs like Arson Watch. By becoming involved, people get a sense that they can do more to protect their homes than just clearing away the brush around them, said David Gottlieb, a director of the Topanga-Las Virgenes Resource Conservation District.

When 29 separate fires were set in Agoura Hills and Topanga Canyon two years ago, the Arson Watch volunteers were called out in force, said Los Angeles County Fire Chief Ray Shackelford, whose territory includes the county’s western end. “As soon as word got out that they were asking for more and more volunteers, the fires stopped.”

Shackelford said the volunteers’ lists of license numbers “give us a place to start” when arson is suspected. In the case of the arsons of two years ago, Arson Watch provided information about four or five vehicles that were present in the areas where the fires started. No arrests were made, but Shackelford believes that the arsonist was among those whose names came up.

Fire officials say that the sacrifice of thousands of summer hours by hundreds of people who have volunteered for Arson Watch is paying off, and that the program’s highly organized canyon patrols in Topanga, Agoura Hills, Malibu, the old Agoura area and Woolsey Canyon appear to have deterred arsonists in those areas.

“In short, what they do is create a presence,” Gottlieb said. “An arsonist could choose not to create a fire in an area that has this vigilance, where people are watching carefully.”

When Arson Watch volunteers come across a fire, they call it in on their radios, and the volunteer dispatcher alerts 911. They attempt to put it out themselves only if it is clearly small enough to be doused with a fire extinguisher or smothered with shovelfuls of dirt. As they patrol, they don’t follow people, and they don’t attempt to make citizen’s arrests.

“We’re not vigilantes,” said Emerson. “We’re an early warning system.”

Gottlieb said Arson Watch is a line of defense against fires, as important as brush clearance and controlled burns by the fire department.

The volunteers buy their own gas and use their own vehicles. Fund-raisers and donations pay for the group’s radio equipment and signs.

In the absence of high winds and with the humidity low, no official “red flag” alert had been called by the Fire Department on the day of the Thousand Oaks fire. But four years of drought have made virtually every day a red flag day for Emerson and his troops, he said.

“We can hardly give them enough praise,” Shackelford said. “As far as I’m concerned, they’re a very, very effective group.”

To his wall of awards, Emerson recently added a Volunteer of the Year citation from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, commending his “gift of time, talent, energy and concern,” through years of devotion to canyon dwellers and their environs.

The former actor/photographer/restaurateur shrugs off the official praise.

“I don’t do it for that,” he said. “I do it because I love this place, and I know what fire can do.”