Flare-Up Keeps Fire Crews Busy : Thousand Oaks: Officials say firebreaks have been restored around 99% of the blaze. Chief is optimistic.

After smoldering stubbornly for days, flames flared up again late Tuesday on the 43,844-acre wildfire site south of Thousand Oaks and were threatening Hidden Valley horse ranches by Wednesday morning.

But hand crews and water-dropping helicopters controlled the flare-up quickly before it could damage any property.

The fire sent a tower of smoke billowing skyward to mix with a dense layer of smoke and ash blown northwest from the massive Malibu fire.

By nightfall Wednesday, fire officials said they had restored the firebreaks around 99% of the Thousand Oaks fire site and were continuing to watch for flare-ups.

Ventura County Fire Chief George E. Lund said he is cautiously optimistic that Hidden Valley would not be threatened again, and that the firebreaks will hold.

“I think we’ll have it, but I said that the day before yesterday too,” Lund said Wednesday evening. “We’ve been chasing this thing for eight days, and it’s fooled us quite a few times as to where it would head.”

As firefighters trooped out Wednesday morning to quash the Thousand Oaks fire’s latest foray, property owners who were burned out by the fire continued trooping into a makeshift federal emergency office in Camarillo to seek disaster aid money.

So far, 39 people have sought emergency money for their losses in the four Ventura County brush fires last week, said Marty Zucker, spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

*

While 21 people asked for a temporary housing grant for a hotel room, 18 homeowners and 12 business owners applied for low-interest loans through the Small Business Administration, Zucker said. Another 10 people who were ineligible for loans applied for outright grants of up to $12,000 from FEMA, Zucker said.

Zucker said the FEMA office will remain open through 7 p.m. Friday at the Ventura County Sheriff’s Training Academy, 273 Durley Road.

Meanwhile, Ventura County tax officials are trying to find property owners whose fire damage may make them eligible for tax breaks until they rebuild, Chief Deputy Assessor Bruce W. Gray said.

Where houses were leveled, only the property will be assessed until the structures are rebuilt--and under Proposition 13, the new houses will be assessed at the same tax base as the old ones, Gray said.

While the latest flare-up did not damage any property, it proved just how stubborn a brush fire can be.

The flare-up erupted on a hillside pasture at the JMJ Ranch near Potrero Road--an island of green land surrounded by blackened brush that had stopped burning visibly by late last week.

Fire crews controlled the renewed flames with hoses and hand tools.

And once the Santa Ana winds eased Wednesday morning, the firefighters used road flares to set fires of their own to clear out about 100 acres of dense, 38-year-old brush.

“We’re going to have flare-ups or smoke for a while, nothing we feel is a threat,” said Sandi Wells, spokeswoman for the Ventura County Fire Department. “We want to control any fire activity. We don’t want the fire controlling us.”

*

Embers could continue to spark fires in unburned islands for the next few weeks, said Alan Campbell, a county Fire Department spokesman. “Some of them can be pretty big and they can be pretty spectacular,” he said.

Fire officials said they are concerned only by islands of brush burning near the edge of the firebreak, which could throw embers into unburned territory outside the fire site.

One 700-acre wind-driven flare-up Tuesday had nearly damaged beachfront homes along Pacific Coast Highway near the Los Angeles County line.

But Wednesday’s flare-up wandered lazily across slopes below Boney Mountain as gentle ocean breezes softened the Santa Anas’ punch.

JMJ Ranch caretaker Myron Patton watched nervously as flames jumped, then died, then danced again in rugged pasture above the ranch, which he said is owned by furniture makers James and Jackie McMahan and their son, Mark.

“About 8:15 last night, there was a little burner started on the back of the mountain. It burned off to the east about 1,500 yards, and about 5 o’clock this morning it was back,” Patterson said Wednesday, leaning on a cane.

“By the time it’s done, it won’t look like anything but a moon mountain,” he said. “It’ll have burned completely around this valley.”

Patterson said he was getting tired of the battle, having injured his foot sometime between Wednesday’s fire watch and last week’s efforts to move 150 cattle and 15 or 20 horses from the ranch to safer ground.

He watched smoke from burning brush filtering up through full-bodied live oak trees and marveled: “It just don’t want to say die.”

Ventura city firefighters said a quarter-acre brush fire was sparked by a malfunctioning electrical transformer Wednesday morning near the Shell Oil lease off of Shell Road, but they doused it quickly.

*

Ventura County arson investigators said they are still pursuing leads on arsonists believed responsible for all four of last week’s wildfires in the county.

The National Weather Service predicted Wednesday that sea breezes will be peak at 15 m.p.h. Thursday afternoon and skies will be sunny with highs in the 70s. Santa Anas are not expected to return for at least five days, the service forecast.

Times correspondent Brenda Day and staff writer Daryl Kelley contributed to this report.