100-Acre Moorpark Canyon Blaze Threatens Houses : Fires: Participants in a Special Olympics equestrian event are evacuated. Investigators suspect arson.

A 100-acre fire raced across a parched Moorpark canyon Saturday afternoon, edging within 50 feet of several homes and a quarter-mile from a ranch where 160 children and volunteers were attending a Special Olympics equestrian event.

It took 125 firefighters and two helicopters about two hours to gain control of the fire, which investigators said may have been arson.

The fire was reported at 1:38 p.m. by canyon resident Teresa Castaneda, who said she spotted the burning brush about 50 feet from her house as she returned home with her three children.

“We saw it up on the hill and right away I called,” she said. “I was scared, but I had my kids with me. That’s all that mattered.”

County fire officials said the quick jump they had on the fire prevented it from spreading outside Walnut Canyon.

“It was an aggressive attack on our part,” Assistant Chief Robert Roper said. “We called in the helicopters because we knew if it jumped Walnut Canyon it would have raced ahead of us.

“We were fortunate that didn’t happen.”

Authorities shut down California 23 for several hours.

Although no one was forced to evacuate the neighborhood, dozens of children and volunteers boarded buses and vans and left the ranch on Walnut Canyon Road where they had been competing in a Special Olympics equestrian event. “We were just about finishing with the show when we first saw it,” ranch owner Pete Peters said.

Firefighters said the blaze came within a quarter-mile of the ranch, but low winds prevented it from moving quickly.

Dorann LaPerch, manager of the Bonn-Fyre Farm horse-breeding and training facility on Walnut Canyon Road, began moving some of the 50 horses housed there after she saw flames across the street.

“We saw the thing get started and it didn’t look like much, but when the wind shifted it came roaring over the hill,” LaPerch said. “All that was between us and the fire was the road.”

LaPerch moved some of the horses to safer ground, but left most of them in the tin-roofed barns. She said fellow horse owners came to her assistance and were prepared to help haul all the animals off the farm if the fire worsened.

“A lot of our neighboring ranch people were sitting here with horse trailers,” she said, “just standing by waiting.”

Fire officials said several groves of eucalyptus trees were burned in the blaze.

“The flames were up as high as the trees,” said Joe Latunski, who lives on four acres of land on Casey Road. The fire touched the edge of his property, but did no serious damage.

“I did a good job of weed abatement,” Latunski said. “I got the fields all clear so it couldn’t go any further. It went around me.”

Canyon resident Nancy Bowden said she has been planning for months to install sprinklers on her roof. Saturday, after collecting her papers and photo albums because the flames came within a few hundred feet of her home, she said she would have them installed.

“My husband kept saying it wasn’t necessary,” she said. “But by the looks of it, he was wrong.”