Santa Ana Winds, Fire Danger to Return : Preparedness: Police and firefighters plan special patrols to deter arsonists like those believed to have set last week’s blazes.

Hot, dry Santa Ana winds are expected to return today, and police and firefighters will be on special patrol across Southern California to deter arsonists who might try to take advantage of the dangerous fire conditions, officials said Monday.

Arsonists were blamed for at least six of last week’s devastating fires. No suspects have been arrested yet in any of those blazes, and investigators fear that some may attempt to strike again today.

Volunteer citizen groups, equipped with portable radios, were scheduled to join police and fire personnel in the patrolling effort that will begin today in areas where brush is thickest and fire danger is the greatest. Fire units were being placed on “red flag” alert.

Gov. Pete Wilson has offered a $50,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of the “sick animal” who set the disastrous Laguna Beach fire.

The Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which serves as the nation’s federal arson investigation arm, is coordinating the investigative efforts of 35 personnel from law enforcement and fire suppression agencies probing the Southern California fires.

The FBI has sent copies of recent letters threatening arson to the bureau’s central laboratory in Washington for fingerprint identification and development of personalty profiles of the authors.

Fire officials disclosed last week that more than 30 letters threatening arson were received by various Southern California police and fire departments and by citizens between Sept. 1 and the outbreak of the fires. The officials said they had no evidence that the letters were connected to any of the blazes.

The Los Angeles Fire Department said that a man calling himself “Fedbuster” sent 15 letters at random, promising to set fires to get back at agents who seized his assets. KCBS-TV broadcast excerpts from some letters it attributed to Fedbuster, that read in part:

“They burned me, now I’m going to burn them back. I fight fire with fire. . . . You think the Oakland (Hills) fire was big? You should see my plans.

“I’m going to set a big fire, actually more than one, bigger than Oakland on October 20, 1991--(going to) settle the score with one of these agencies and other government people that screwed me bad.”

Steve Ruda, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department, said that despite some clues, the department’s arson investigators have yet to figure out the identity of Fedbuster.

“The clues are not specific, they are general,” Ruda said. “The writer doesn’t specifically state when or where he is going to set fires, only that he is threatening to set fires.”

Orange County Fire Chief Larry Holmes said the situation is ripe for renewed strikes by arsonists.

“They all recognize how much attention these fires got nationally,” Holmes said. “With these wind conditions coming, it is more likely that they will come out again.

“There is a whole list of people who are apt to start fires,” Holms said. “When the media begins to cover it like this, it just becomes a feeding frenzy for them.”

Forecasters said the winds should gust up to 50 m.p.h. over some areas of the Southland today and Wednesday, accompanied by warm temperatures and low humidity--conditions similar to those that whipped last week’s brush fires into firestorms that destroyed at least 815 buildings, including 685 homes.

With the 14 blazes that charred more than 170,000 acres fully contained and largely extinguished by Monday night, the main work of the hundreds of firefighters still manning the lines was to prepare for today’s winds and to ready the land for the winter rains.

In many fire areas, firefighters were using hand tools to snuff out the few remaining hot spots and to unearth smoldering brush buried by bulldozers, which could still be hot enough to start new fires when the winds pick up.

The next big task--should Southern California get through the next few days without another major trial by fire--will be to repair slopes where the heaviest runoff is expected during winter rains, smoothing over bulldozer tracks that could erode into gullies, cutting shallow “water bars” to divert the runoff and spiking down heavy mesh to fasten unstable hillsides in place, said Fire Capt. Joe Sing of the California Department of Forestry.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors today is expected to appropriate an estimated $1 million for emergency flood-control measures, including extra sandbags for residents who live below denuded hillsides.

In a memo to the board, Public Works Director T.A. Tidemanson warned of a “substantially increased risk of flood damage during the present storm season and for several years hereafter” as a result of the fires in Malibu-Thousand Oaks, Altadena and Chatsworth. The money would be used to build concrete debris basins and other barriers, clear sediment from existing basins and buy 1.2 million extra sandbags, a public works spokeswoman said.

The emergency expenditure is not expected to hurt the cash-starved county because the money would be drawn from Flood Control District revenue.

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The preparation for rain will include a major reseeding effort in the burn areas, so grass will grow to help hold the topsoil.

“There’s sides of hills where the fire burned so hot that it’s burnt almost white,” Sing said. “In a scenario where there’s runoff, the best thing is to go in there and reseed.”

Hand crews will shovel earth smooth where firebreaks were slashed across the land, and bulldozers will drag huge steel claws to break up fire-baked earth to prepare it for seeding, Sing said.

The big tractors will plow under some brush that was cut by firefighters during the battles to stem the blazes, he said. The plowed brush will decay slowly, enriching the soil and promoting growth.

As the fire crews worked Monday, fire victims continued to stream into disaster centers seeking federal and state aid.

Officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said 475 families have registered for assistance at four disaster application centers set up in Laguna Beach, Arcadia, Camarillo and Murietta in Riverside County.

At the centers, workers from state and federal agencies are processing requests for temporary housing assistance, disaster unemployment insurance and low-interest loans for rebuilding homes and businesses. Frank Kishton, FEMA’s coordinating officer for the disaster, said the first checks to meet emergency housing needs were issued Monday.

FEMA, criticized in the past for its slow response after major disasters, has promised this time to speed up its process and, for the first time on a wide-scale basis, is using a new hand-held electronic system designed to expedite claims from the field.

With the small, computer-like devices, inspectors are able to submit information on damage and repair estimates that are then fed into the system for processing. The computers free inspectors from having to travel with their data to field offices, often miles away from disaster sites, officials said.

“During the Loma Prieta (earthquake) disaster, there was about a 21-day turnaround for application, but with this system, it will take as little as three days,” said Robert Lambert, a FEMA emergency management specialist.

The Altadena Town Council met in special session Monday night to give residents an opportunity to question public officials about insurance, reseeding programs and relief efforts. A good deal of the interest centered on planned efforts to stem mudslides this winter in the Altadena fire zone.

One hundred furnished apartments are being made available rent-free for a month for victims of the fires, according to Herb Rosenbloom, president of the R&B; Apartment Management Co. The firm is providing 25 apartments at each of four locations--Newport Beach, Long Beach, Toluca Hills and Anaheim. Inquiries should be made through local Red Cross service centers.

Richard Andrews, director of the state Office of Emergency Services, said more than $41 million has been spent by state and local agencies to fight the fires.

Curtis Brack, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., said the Santa Ana winds due in today are being generated by a high-pressure system over the Rocky Mountains that is pushing air toward Southern California and by a trough of low pressure off the coast that is pulling the air offshore.

He said that as the air spills down through the San Gabriel Mountains, it will dry out and heat by compression, gusting up to 50 m.p.h. near mountain passes and up to 40 m.p.h. in coastal valleys.

Times staff writers Jeff Brazil, Mike Carlson, Anna Cekola, Kevin Johnson, Tracey Kaplan, Daryl Kelley, Carlos Lozano, Mark Platte, Carla Rivera and Mack Reed contributed to this story.