Fire Nearly Out, but Wind Is Threat : Arson Investigators Look for Clues After Miracle Rain Helps Stop Hillside Blaze

Firefighters Saturday evening had all but stamped out a wind-whipped blaze that had threatened dozens of homes, forced scores of evacuations and blackened nearly 400 acres in the hills above City Hall before a miracle rain and a shift in wind helped stop it in its tracks.

But officials were bracing for a new onslaught of gusts that they feared could reignite the flames, which Friday night surged through decades-old brush and charred the home-studded hills rising above the city’s downtown skyline.

Fire officials continued to hunt for clues and suspects in the deliberately set fire, which was fully contained by Saturday afternoon and was expected to be extinguished by today at noon.

Arson investigators used red and yellow hazard tape to fence off the fire’s ignition point--a rugged 50- by 100-foot slice of hillside in Grant Park littered with broken beer bottles about 200 feet from the Ventura Public Pistol Range and 15 feet from its access road.

Battalion Chief Bill Rigg, with the Ventura Fire Department, said the blaze began about 7 p.m. near Brakey Road, but did not start inside the pistol range and did not appear to have been caused by anything in the range.

Instead, he said, investigators were convinced that someone had deliberately set the fire. The fire’s small point of origin suggested arson, Rigg said. Investigators also had found something at the site that indicated someone had tried to start the fire, but Rigg would not say what they had discovered or what kind of device might have been used.

At the fire’s peak, 800 firefighters from 16 agencies were battling it. Two firefighters suffered minor knee injuries. And though no homes were lost Friday night, fire officials said the blaze--dubbed the Poli fire--had the potential for a lot of damage.

“It was a wind-driven fire, and we were definitely concerned it could go all the way to Santa Paula,” said Capt. Kelly Richeson of the Ventura County Fire Department. “But the rain really helped us out [Friday] night. Unfortunately, we’re not out of the woods yet. Not even close.”

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The National Weather Service is calling for strong northeast Santa Ana-type winds through tonight for Ventura County. In addition, the brief rainstorm that unexpectedly swept through the area and dropped 6 inches of snow at Frazier Park probably will be replaced with dry weather.

That prediction had Richeson and others worried Saturday about the potential for more problems.

Ventura Mayor Jack Tingstrom, who held a City Hall news conference Saturday morning to praise the fast work of fire crews, said he hoped the flames would be put out before winds picked up again.

“We’re all feeling very lucky this morning,” he said, noting that the blaze had already cost Ventura $350,000 for fire response alone. “We were lucky to have a little rain, which helped immensely. I’m going to church tomorrow, because thank God it rained.”

Ventura’s hillside dwellers awoke Saturday morning to a cold wind that blasted a fine rain of black ash over their houses.

They looked out over scorched hills, where the flames had stopped at the edge of a 100-foot buffer zone carved out by county-mandated weed abatement.

And they marveled that the fire had claimed no homes and no lives.

“It was pretty close. It was pretty amazing,” said Gay Conroy, surveying her blackened property line on Gilliard Lane. “We just bought this house three months ago and have been doing extensive remodeling, and it was, like, ‘Naw, God’s not going to do this to us.’ Fortunately, part of the remodeling was cutting down a bunch of pine trees on the ridge here, and if we hadn’t, that could have gotten really ugly.”

Just down the hill, Don Greene had driven his vintage Jaguars back to his garage after moving them out Friday night and was buffing the ash off his Porsche late Saturday morning. When other Pacific View Lane residents evacuated, Greene had stayed behind to hose down their houses.

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There was little more he could do but watch the flames chew on the edge of his cleared-off property line and hope that wind-blown cinders did not ignite the trees hugging his house before firefighters arrived.

“It was really scary,” he said. “My girlfriend and I watched the whole thing happen. She gasped whenever there was a big flare-up, and she screamed. . . . But the firefighters were great.”

And just as things looked worst, he said, firefighters stretched hoses into position, the winds began to die and the rains came.

At that moment, homeowners on Mint Lane began to rejoice, said Melinda Norcott, who had watched anxiously as flames roared up the ridge across the street from her house.

“It was great when it started raining,” she said. “We were jumping up and down and hugging each other and going, ‘Rain! Rain!’ ”

At the top of Mint Lane, former Ventura Mayor John McWherter limped around his house with a cane Saturday morning. He had taken a bad step and hurt his leg the night before while hiking around the brushy ridge beside his house to check the fire’s progress.

Before firefighters showed up, McWherter and his neighbors had been on his roof spraying down his house. Then fire crews swarmed into the neighborhood and began laying hose.

“We were pretty happy to see the firetrucks,” said McWherter, 81. “They went in with the hose and sprayed the blaze, but the wind was still blowing and the hot gases created this firestorm. It blew up over the roof and almost knocked me off my feet.”

Even with their doors and windows thrown open to the cool breeze, Peter and Lisa Anderson’s house on Manzanita Court smelled of smoke. But it was still standing after the flames stopped about 100 yards away.

At one point Friday night, Peter was convinced that the house they had bought in June was moments from destruction. Firefighters had kept the blaze in check on the hillside that towers over the sharply sloped cul-de-sac, but a sudden wind shift sent the flames raging.

“We thought the house was gone,” Peter said. “I told Lisa, just get in the car and go.”

Then the rains came. Moments before, Alan Kosh had been on top of his three-story home with a garden hose trying to douse the glowing embers that were landing on the composition roof and wood siding.

He had even soaked himself when embers began landing on him. He and his wife, Tina, said they couldn’t believe their luck when the skies opened up.

“It just seemed to come out of nowhere,” Tina Kosh said.

The fire put a kink in Ventura High School’s homecoming game against Port Hueneme, which was called by police with less than five minutes to go and the Cougars up 55 to 0. Both king and queen were crowned, but the dance has been rescheduled for Nov. 7.

Parent Chris Will was selling at the music boosters’ concession when the blaze began.

“The band was trying to march, but they couldn’t concentrate on their music because they were looking at the fire on the hills,” Will recalled. “The drum major almost fell off his podium, the wind was blowing so hard.”

The experience was actually kind of cool, confessed 16-year-old junior Rebekah Combe: “You don’t usually end up being evacuated at your homecoming.”

By late Friday night, the fire had died down almost as quickly as it had ignited, with Grant Park’s Serra cross and a nearby microwave communications tower untouched. And by midnight, the capricious winds that had sent the fire racing eastward across the foothills earlier in the evening had settled down to occasional gusts.

At the command center in the parking lot at City Hall, Ventura city and county fire officials splashed through shallow puddles while keeping close tabs on the direction of the fire and the position of their crews.

Ventura City Fire Chief Dennis Downs went home shortly before 1 a.m., comfortable that the high humidity and low winds would help keep the fire in check throughout the night.

On Saturday morning, helicopters bombarded the fire with water and hand crews attacked it on the ground. The copters had not been used Friday night because of winds and darkness.

Downtown, Ventura began to return to normal. Ventura police eased up on their barricades, and carloads of the curious streamed up Kalorama Drive to survey the damage.

“We were down at the beach [Friday] night and we could see the whole ridge on fire,” said Ian Cameron, 23. “I was surprised they had it out this morning.”

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The Burning Hills

The Poli fire began about 7 p.m. Friday near a road in Grant Park. By 8 p.m., flames were shooting along the hillside behind downtown Ventura. But firefighters got a break when the winds shifted and rain arrived about 10 p.m. The fire was contained Saturday afternoon after burning nearly 400 acres. Alvarez and Reed are Times staff writers; Baker is a correspondent. Correspondent Kate Folmar and Times staff writer Tracy Wilson also contributed to this report.