Brush Fire Torches 450 Acres, Threatens Oil Field, Hospital : Ventura: Officials seek a young man for questioning in blaze blamed on arson. No damage or injuries are reported.

An arsonist’s spark touched off a brush fire Wednesday that consumed more than 450 acres of sun-dried vegetation in the hills and oil fields at the northwestern border of Ventura, county fire officials said.

The fire briefly threatened condominiums and the Vista del Mar Psychiatric Hospital on Seneca Street, and it burned to within 100 yards of a 50,000-gallon natural gas tank in the Texaco oil field off of Ventura Avenue.

But neither injuries nor property damage were reported, and the fire burned on northwestward through uninhabited brush from its point of origin at the end of Seneca Street before firefighters brought it under control Wednesday evening.

Fire officials said they want to question a young man who was seen leaving the Seneca Street area shortly after the fire was first reported about 1 p.m.

Witnesses described the man as 24 to 28 years old with dark, curly hair and average build, wearing a gray sweat shirt and blue work pants, said county Fire Department spokesman Michael Lindbery.

More than 340 firefighters from the Ventura City and County Fire Department, Los Angeles County Fire Department and state and federal forestry agencies battled the blaze.

Helicopters from the county Sheriff’s Department and U. S. Forest Service clattered overhead, dropping water on the wind-fed flames. And tanker airplanes bombed the heavy brush with water before flying to Goleta for refilling.

Hand crews from the fire departments and California Department of Forestry hacked through brush that had grown thick in two successive springs of heavy rain.

Fresh grass growth acted as a wick for the blaze, igniting brush that had not burned for at least eight years in some places, said Sandi Wells, spokeswoman for the Ventura County Fire Department.

“I think the firefighters did a great job utilizing all the resources that were available,” Wells said.

John Stevens, a Texaco official, agreed as he watched fire crews slow the flames’ advance toward the oil giant’s natural-gas refining plant on School Canyon Road.

“The fire department has very good control,” said Stevens, a Texaco gas plants engineer. “This is probably the one facility you wouldn’t want near a fire.”

The plant itself was also prepared: Texaco had had the heavy brush trimmed in a perimeter around the plant, and huge tanks containing 450,000 gallons of water waited less than a mile uphill, ready to pipe water onto the facility to cool it in case the flames grew too hot.

The plant also was equipped with automatic valves that would shut down the flow of natural gas through nearby pipelines if they overheated, shunting gas back into the oil field and away from the fire, he said.

The oil company is used to coping with fires in its fields, said J.W. Brock, another Texaco official. “We have these fires about every four or five years,” he said.