Rash of Rincon Fires Worries Business People

Sandy Walker stood amid the smoldering rubble that used to be Walker Wood Products and stared in disbelief. “This was a dream come true for my husband,” she said. “It had state-of-the-art equipment.”

The fire that razed the 50,000-square-foot cabinet production shop built by Tony Walker and his family in 1986 caused an estimated $3 million in damage. Forty-m.p.h. winds fanned the racing flames early Tuesday morning, forcing firefighters to allow the building to burn to the ground rather than waste water in a hopeless battle to save it, Sandy Walker said.

“It appears to be an arson at this point,” sheriff’s deputy Pat Espinoza said. “Witnesses’ statements seem to indicate they saw two separate fires, which indicates an arson.”

The Walker blaze is the latest of seven suspicious fires in the Rincon Indian Reservation area in the past six months, a fire official said.

“They’re all in or around the Rincon reservation,” said Fire Department Prevention Unit Capt. John Atkins. “The proximity is very suspicious.”

Atkins said the five fires he is familiar with all occurred at night and shared other features, which he would not comment on.

The rash of fires has Rincon business people and public officials worried.

“It’s gone beyond an occasional thing; it’s become a constant thing,” said John Mazzetti, a partner in Frank Mazzetti & Sons feed store, which was damaged by fire in October. “They said I was broken into and the fire was set from inside.” The blaze destroyed about half the store, causing $125,000 in structural damage and inventory losses, he said.

Previous incidents were mainly brush fires, such as the 300 acres of brush ignited behind the old Rincon Indian bingo parlor between Walker’s shop and Mazzetti’s store, said James Joaquin Fletcher, tribal administrator for the 4,800-acre reservation.

But businesses have lately become the victims.

“It makes you a little nervous to see your place or your neighbor’s place go up in flames like that,” Mazzetti said.

“I heard that the businesses on the reservation are concerned, but I haven’t had any feedback from the membership,” Fletcher said. The reservation’s tribal council is negotiating for additional sheriff’s deputies to patrol the reservation as a deterrent to arson and other crimes, he said.

Surveying the wooden support beams he and his family recently installed while rebuilding the store, Mazzetti disputed any notion that businesses or individuals on the reservation are being singled out as targets. “I just think that, like any other community, we have an arsonist that just hasn’t been caught.”