Investigators Seek Clues to Green Meadow Arson : Disaster: Multi- agency team of determined officials is tracking scores of tips as crews in the field wind down their campaign.

As fire crews patrolled the cooling 43,844-acre Green Meadow wildfire site near Thousand Oaks Friday, investigators continued their search for the arsonists who set four corners of Ventura County ablaze.

County arson investigator Peter Cronk said he and his team are running down every clue they have, but the investigation is still open.

“Everybody’s calling in here. We’re running every tip out to the nth degree,” Cronk said Friday. “We’re beating the pavement and making the phones go nuts.”

Cronk said he, two other county investigators and a state fire marshal’s investigator are sifting through dozens of calls--25 were received in a four-hour period Thursday--weeding out cranks and looking into the rest.

They also plan to revisit the fire sites near Thousand Oaks, Santa Paula, Ojai and Simi Valley “to refresh our memories, walk through it and try to reconstruct who saw what, when and where,” he said.

Investigators want to talk to a white woman in her 30s who was seen at the Arts Council Center on Greenmeadow Avenue calling to report the fire on Oct. 26, Cronk said. They will guarantee her anonymity, but she may have information about the arson that will help solve the case, Cronk said.

“We made the appeal once before and she called . . . but she didn’t leave a number,” Cronk said. “We need to sit down with her.”

Cronk asked that the woman call arson investigators at 388-4269.

Meanwhile, fire officials spent Friday dismantling the Green Meadow command post at Borchard Community Center in Newbury Park and dismissing the last 95 firefighters and support personnel.

“We’ll finish here tonight and head off in the morning,” said Capt. Rod Delgado of the California Department of Forestry, who is overseeing the demobilization of a force of firefighters that peaked last week at more than 2,000.

The fire was declared fully contained at 6 p.m. Thursday. It is predicted to be under control--or virtually out--by 6 p.m. Sunday, said Ventura County Fire Department supervisor Wayne Maynard, the planning chief for the effort.

“ Contained is when you have a line around it,” Maynard said. “And controlled is when you can just walk away from it.”

Ventura County fire crews regularly assigned to the region will patrol the fire lines over the weekend, he said.

Out on the site, three bulldozer teams and a hand crew cut channels through scorched earth around Hidden Valley to help prevent erosion in the winter rains.

And a multi-agency team of wildlife conservationists continued planning how to help the damaged land return to normal.

The conservationists hope that seeds will germinate and grow naturally, making 5,000 acres of burned national parkland in the Santa Monica Mountains Recreation Area green again, said David Gackenbach of the National Park Service.

The fire burned so hot that seeds may have been completely incinerated in some areas, but Park Service policy dictates that those areas should not be artificially seeded unless absolutely necessary, Gackenbach said Friday.

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As for property owners who want to refoliate quickly, he said: “If they water it, it’ll come back. We’ll be working with them to make sure they use native plants and varieties of plants that are more fire-resistant and drought-tolerant.”

Supervisor Vicky Howard is assembling a team of volunteers to help the National Park Service and private landowners restore trails and plants throughout the burn site. “We will follow their direction, obviously,” Howard said.

Howard said the Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District has already promised to donate 1,000 oak saplings to the project.

In another development Friday, U.S. Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills) joined Rep. Elton Gallegly’s call for an end to the red tape that kept some California Air National Guard planes dropping fire retardant grounded for hours last week when wildfires were burning out of control.

Beilenson said he joined the Simi Valley Republican in introducing a bill that would exempt firefighting efforts from a 1932 law that prohibits mobilizing the Air National Guard until all civilian firefighting aircraft are exhausted.

“We need to do everything we can to maximize the federal response in these emergencies and to ensure that all possible help gets to the affected areas as soon as possible,” Beilenson said in a prepared statement.

Also on Friday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said it will keep its disaster aid center in Camarillo--which had been due to close Friday night--open until further notice. The center is open 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily at the Ventura County Sheriff’s Training Academy, said Priscilla Parness, a FEMA spokeswoman.