Trail Cold in Ventura-Area Arson Fires : Investigations: No suspects have been arrested in the four blazes. Authorities say tips are coming slowly, if at all.

As burned-out homeowners begin to rebuild and plant shoots poke through the ash, arson detectives have found precious few clues in the deliberately set wildfires that scorched the four corners of Ventura County this fall.

Investigators say that the alibis of all their suspects have checked out, and that they are getting fewer tips, many of which turn out to be crank calls.

The fires destroyed more than 70,000 acres of brush and 119 houses, outbuildings and mobile homes at the end of October. Damage estimates in the two largest fires, near Thousand Oaks and Santa Paula, have topped $13 million. And the state Department of Forestry estimates those fires cost $13.3 million to extinguish, said Abbe Cohen, fiscal analyst for the county Fire Department.

In the largest fire, the 43,844-acre Green Meadow blaze near Thousand Oaks, one investigator admitted, “We’re almost at a standstill.”

“Basically nothing’s changed,” said Ventura County fire investigation specialist William Hager.

Tips have been phoned in from all over the country, he said.

“We’ve been doing a lot of follow-up on that,” Hager said. Many of the tips are from women turning in their boyfriends because they are angry at them, he said. But investigators check out all the tips, even the ones they suspect are from cranks.

They have interviewed more than a dozen former arsonists and suspects in other fires, all of whom have proved they were not present where the fires started, Hager said. Investigators also have eliminated as suspects five people who were near the end of Green Meadow Avenue in Thousand Oaks the afternoon the fire began.

It was there, about 1:15 p.m. Oct. 26, that someone set the Green Meadow blaze. Over the next 10 days, flames roared southward before being extinguished by nearly 2,000 firefighters.

Hager declined to describe the device used to start the fire, saying, “That’s how we eliminate the lunatics. We had someone who called up and said he did it, but when we asked him how and where he couldn’t say.”

Investigators still are looking for clues to lead them to the owners of two vehicles spotted in the area--a black, early-1980s Datsun 280Z with chrome bumpers, and a full-size Chevrolet or Ford pickup with slightly faded orange paint, Hager said.

“If somebody saw or heard anything since the fire, we’d be more than happy to talk to them and hear what they heard,” he said. “Our number is (805) 388-4269.”

Investigators are also running out of tips in the 26,500-acre Steckel fire that raced from the borders of Santa Paula toward Ventura, said Sgt. Kelly Fadler of the sheriff’s major crimes unit.

“Early on we had a suspect we worked very hard and heavy on,” Fadler said Thursday. “He was a local cattle rancher that had lost a lease and had some other motives for possibly doing it.”

The rancher took a polygraph test, which he passed. The investigation exonerated him, said Fadler, whose office is investigating the Steckel blaze jointly with the county Fire Department’s arson team.

Fadler said investigators also are looking for a vehicle that may have been near the fire, which began in the early hours of Oct. 27 near Steckel Park.

Investigators are saying even less about the Wheel fire that blackened 1,650 acres of the Los Padres National Forest near Ojai and the 1,500-acre Box Canyon fire that seriously injured four Los Angeles city firefighters.

Brian Humphrey, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department, said investigators do not want to give out any information that could jeopardize their work.

“They said there is nothing new they wish to state at this point in time,” Humphrey said. “People who saw or continue to see suspicious activity can call (800) 47-ARSON. It remains under active investigation.”

U.S. Forest Service investigators looking into the Wheel fire have checked all leads, said spokeswoman Juanita Freel. “None of them have panned out. The evidence they did have went to the lab, but there’s no indicator of any responsible party. That investigation is still ongoing,” she said.