Few Leads Develop in Wildfire Inquiries : Arson: Files remain open on four blazes that hit Ventura County last year. Heavy workload has sidetracked some investigators.

The trails have gone cold, arson investigators said Thursday, but the files remain open on all four of the devastating wildfires that swept across Ventura County in the fall.

Just last week, an Orange County man called Ventura County arson detectives, claiming that he knew who set the 43,844- acre Green Meadow blaze in Thousand Oaks in late October.

But when interviewed by Orange County authorities, the tipster proved to be “a wacko” who claimed that he got the information from space aliens, said William Hager, Ventura County fire investigation specialist.

“We’re not going to close the case because something may pop up,” Hager said. “It’s in kind of a hold pattern.”

In the same week that Los Angeles prosecutors identified two Los Angeles area firefighters as suspects in the Malibu fire, investigators into Ventura County’s four blazes said they have few active leads.

The 1,650-acre Wheel fire near Ojai and the 1,500-acre Box Canyon fire near Simi Valley, which were both in November, remain unsolved, investigators said Thursday.

“The investigation on the Wheel fire is still open, but they currently have no new leads,” said Joe Pasinato, a spokesman for the U. S. Forest Service, which is investigating that fire.

The Box Canyon fire, which seriously injured four Los Angeles firefighters, “is still an open case, still considered to be arson, but (investigators) are not actively pursuing it,” said Battalion Chief Roger Gillis, a department spokesman.

“They’ve had numerous calls and tips and chased every single one of them down, but none of them have led to any solid suspects,” Gillis said.

Ventura County’s major crimes detectives and arson investigators still have some leads in the two largest fires--the Green Meadow fire near Thousand Oaks, which was California’s largest brush fire of 1993, and the Steckel fire that raced across 26,500 acres from the edge of Santa Paula nearly to Ventura in November.

But Ventura County Sheriff’s Sgt. Kelly Fadler said fire investigators have been too busy readying numerous assault and homicide cases for court to spend much time on the fires.

Investigators believe that a Santa Paula man is a possible suspect in the Steckel fire, and investigators plan to interview him as soon as their workload eases, Fadler said.

“We have some loose ends and, when we get a break, we want to tie them up,” he said. “We’ve had one shooting after another, and things we’ve had to take care of, we’ve jumped on.”

Fadler said of the Santa Paula man: “He is not a real strong suspect, and we don’t have any evidence that points to him. He’s just a lead that we wanted to get back to and talk to.”

After interviewing 200 to 300 people in the Green Meadow fire, arson investigators still have a handful of unresolved leads, Hager said.

They continue to seek the owners of two vehicles seen near the fire’s point of origin at the end of Green Meadow Avenue.

One was a black, early 1980s Datsun 280Z with chrome bumpers and the other a full-size Chevrolet or Ford pickup with slightly faded orange paint, Hager said.

Fadler asked that anyone with information on the Steckel fire to call him at 654-2344.

And Hager asked that anyone with tips on the Green Meadow fire call arson investigators at 388-4269.

He added: “The Fire Department depends on the public for their help and for their eyeball assistance” in recalling clues.

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