Grand Jury to Hold Hearing on Malibu Blaze : Investigation: Several other firefighters who were at the scene Nov. 2 say they believe the suspects are telling the truth. Officials discount a theory that a downed power line ignited the flames.

Roughly half a dozen witnesses have been ordered to appear at a three-day grand jury hearing later this month as prosecutors attempt to assess the case of two Southern California firefighters accused of igniting last year’s deadly Malibu/Calabasas fire.

Among those who are expected to appear are the two suspects--Nicholas A. Durepo, 24, and Steven R. Shelp, 29--and several people with whom prosecutors believe the two men may have discussed their activities on Nov. 2, the day of the fire. Their girlfriends and other people close to Shelp and Durepo are scheduled to appear for the hearings, which have been set for the week of May 16, sources close to the investigation said.

Both men have denied any wrongdoing. No charges have been filed against either of them.

The upcoming hearings will mark the third time that the grand jury has heard evidence in the case, although the two previous sessions were reportedly brief ones. Already, grand jurors have taken testimony from the parents of Yumi Sakaida, a close friend of Shelp. Durepo and Shelp have told investigators that they spent part of the day of the fire at the Sakaidas’ house in Topanga, and the parents reportedly were questioned about the two men’s whereabouts during that time.

“They pulled in some of Durepo’s friends,” one person familiar with the case said. “They went after people who he had just spoken to.”

Shelp, who was a volunteer firefighter at the time of the Nov. 2 blaze and has since been hired by the Los Angeles City Fire Department, has denied any wrongdoing and told some friends that he believes the fire actually was caused by a downed power line along Old Topanga Canyon Road.

That view is echoed privately by some firefighters, including some of those first to arrive on the scene of the Nov. 2 blaze.

“I don’t think they did it,” said one firefighter whose company was among the first to arrive at the originating point of the Malibu fire. “I don’t think this investigation focused on how the fire started but on how to get these guys.”

Several other firefighters who helped battle the blaze, all speaking on the condition that they not be identified, said they saw a power line down in the charred ruins of the field where the fire started, and passed that information on to arson investigators. In addition, a number of residents recall that their power went out before they saw signs of fire, leading them to the conclusion that an electrical line might have sparked the blaze.

But as new details trickled out Friday regarding the status of the investigation, law enforcement sources and power company officials said detectives eliminated that possibility early on in the investigation.

“The L.A. County fire and sheriff’s homicide (units) both investigated the cause of the fire extensively,” said Kevin Kelly, a spokesman for Southern California Edison. “Our information is that there was no power pole involvement in the starting of the fire.”

Rick LaSance, the electro-mechanic foreman in charge of the area for the Los Angeles Waterworks, also was summoned to the fire scene days after the blaze to help sheriff’s investigators determine if the utility’s telemetry wires could have been a factor. The 24-volt telephone wires--those closest to the exact origin of the fire--allow the utility to determine if there is water in two tanks just above the origin of the fire, but those wires were also ruled out as a potential cause of the blaze, according to a utility official.

There were no signs of arcing from a downed power line in the area, said one source familiar with the investigation, adding that authorities believe the line came down after the fire had begun, not before.

Ron Ablott, an arson specialist with the Sheriff’s Department, led the arson investigation and ruled out the possibility of power lines causing the fire. At a news conference last November, Ablott told reporters he had determined that the fire was arson only after ruling out every other possibility--a common approach in arson investigations.

“There is no evidence of an accidental fire or anything to indicate that the fire was accidentally started,” Ablott said that day. “There’s only one thing that could cause that to ignite . . . and that’s an open flame.”

Ablott’s work was reviewed and approved by other arson specialists, sources close to the case said.

Having dismissed the power line as the culprit, investigators theorize that Shelp and Durepo chose the hillside location because they thought they could start the fire there and still contain it.

The area where the fire started is next to a 400,000-gallon water tank, has two fire hydrants nearby and is bisected by roads, which can act as fire breaks.

Investigators believe that the two young men, both of whom were experienced volunteer firefighters, picked that location because they felt they could put out the hillside blaze and then be hailed as heroes.

That theory of the incident, however, has been sharply contested by the suspects, who insist that they happened upon the fire just as it was taking hold. In interviews shortly after the blaze, the two men said they had spotted the fire as they were driving by in Durepo’s blue pickup truck.

Although the two men have not been available for comment this week, they previously said they tried their best to extinguish the blaze. Witnesses recall the two men spraying the fire with a garden hose--which had been hooked up to a fire hydrant using a special adapter that Shelp and Durepo told investigators they obtained from a passing plumber.

Investigators so far have not been able to locate that plumber.

When one area resident, Ron Mass, was badly burned in the blaze, Shelp and Durepo tried to assist him as well. Photographs from the scene show the two of them spraying Mass with water and tending to him in the bed of Durepo’s pickup truck.

Citing those acts of heroism, friends and relatives of Shelp and Durepo have characterized the investigation as the work of overzealous and misguided sheriff’s deputies.

Some firefighters, including some of those who met Durepo and Shelp on the morning of the Malibu blaze, agree.

Several firefighters--all of them speaking anonymously because they said they had been warned by the Fire Department management to refrain from giving interviews--said Friday that they remembered seeing Shelp and Durepo along Old Topanga Canyon Road during the early moments of the Malibu blaze. Those firefighters said the two men were acting anything but suspiciously.

“Those guys weren’t nervous at all,” said one. “They were just anxious to help out.”

Added another: “I feel that these were just two guys that tried to stop and help and were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Several of the firefighters interviewed Friday said they had been questioned by authorities conducting the probe and felt that those investigators were bent on identifying Shelp and Durepo as suspects.

“From the thrust of their conversations with us,” said one, “they were out to get these guys from minute one.”

Times staff writer Robert J. Lopez contributed to this report.