Firefighters Find Hillside Crevice Near Residences : Camarillo: Fractures overlooking housing tract and mobile-home park spark fears of rockslide. Homeowners official plans a geological inspection.

Firefighters putting out a stubborn hillside blaze in Camarillo on Sunday discovered a gaping crevice in a rock formation that they fear could collapse during winter rains and send an avalanche of dirt and granite tumbling toward nearby homes.

The fire, started by two teen-age hikers from Camarillo trying to keep warm, burned more than 30 acres before it was contained late Saturday.

But firefighters mopping up hot spots Sunday discovered a series of wide fractures in a granite hillside at an abandoned quarry overlooking a nearby housing tract and mobile-home park.

“I don’t like what I see. That crack is five or six feet wide,” said Bill Torrence, a homeowners association official who toured the site by helicopter Sunday morning. “When it starts raining up there, my employees aren’t going to be up there.”

A maintenance shop and storage yard are closest to the quarry at the foot of the hill. Just beyond are the 520 homes of the Camarillo Springs Country Club Village mobile-home park and The Springs housing development.

Between the maintenance shop and the houses is an asphalt lot, where more than 60 homeowners park their recreational vehicles.

“I’m very happy that the Fire Department was up there to find that (crevice) because it could create more of a catastrophe than the fire,” said Torrence, who estimated that more than 300 tons of granite could come tumbling down during a bitter storm. “I don’t even know what’s holding it there.”

Torrence, who lives on Christina Avenue at the base of the hill, said he would call a geologist today to examine the area and determine the stability of the rocks.

“This is an emergency as far as I’m concerned,” he said.

But some of Torrence’s neighbors were not so fearful.

“It would be good to check it out, but there have been no problems up there at all,” said George Gullickson, a retired aerospace executive who has lived in the village for 18 years. “We’ve had some awful heavy rains before, but we’ll just have to wait and see. I’m not too concerned.”

George Longo, whose family owns the quarry, said Sunday that it was too early to say what might be done if the crevice proves dangerous to nearby homeowners.

“It would take a big meeting of the family to decide what to do,” he said of the potential threat.

But Longo did say that Camarillo city officials would never have allowed the homes to be located at the base of the hill if it were unstable.

“That thing’s withstood a heck of a lot of earthquakes,” Longo said.

Sheriff’s Department helicopter crew chief Ron Stufflebeam said he has paid close attention to the old quarry site.

“I’ve been flying over this mountain for 14 years and I’ve never seen that crack,” he said.

Three hand crews of 10 firefighters each scoured the hillside Sunday to fully control the blaze that began when two teen-agers lit a fire to keep warm, officials said. Helicopters doused hot spots with water again Sunday to ensure that winds did not reignite the blaze.

“The (recent) Green Meadow fire burned everything on the south side of Potrero Road, but there’s still plenty to burn on this side,” Ventura County Fire Capt. Sam Turner said.

Turner said that it was up to investigators to affix a cost to the price of extinguishing the fire, and that the parents of the two teen-agers might be presented the bill. The teen-agers were cited and released Saturday.