Officials Report Blaze Near Piru Is Contained

Firefighters said Tuesday that they had contained the Hopper Canyon fire, completing a 35-mile-long fuel break around the wildfire that had burned within 1 1/2 miles of tiny Piru.

More than 1,000 firefighters, aided by 12 helicopters and two air tankers, mopped up hot spots of the largely inactive 8-day-old blaze that charred about 24,800 acres of Santa Clara Valley chaparral.

Piru Canyon Road, which has been closed to the public since the fire began, was expected to reopen today, enabling tourists to again reach Lake Piru.

Meanwhile, frustrated investigators continued their probe into whether the fire began accidentally as a result of human activity or was deliberately set.

The fire began on a remote oil field inside Los Padres National Forest 7 1/2 miles from the end of Goodenough Road north of Fillmore about 20 minutes before or after 2 p.m. Aug. 5. But the spot where the fire broke out is at least 100 feet from any stationary machinery, investigators said, making it unlikely that it was sparked by nearby equipment.

“We haven’t ruled out vehicles, it could have been arson, it could have been electrical lines, it could have been an alien spaceship flying overhead,” said Bill Hager, an investigator with the Ventura County Fire Department. “We have more than enough leads to go on.”

The inability to receive accurate times of cellular telephone calls from different people who reported the fire is hampering the investigation, he said.

Telephone company officials refuse to release call times without a court order, which investigators cannot get without a criminal case being filed. And investigators cannot file a criminal case without a fire report, which in turn cannot be completed until they can determine the cause of the fire.

“It’s very frustrating,” Hager said. “We have to wait for the normal billing cycle to end and then for them to get their [telephone] bills and that will take two weeks. . . . Meanwhile, memories get a little less sharp.”

Firefighters were aided Tuesday by lower temperatures and higher humidity. Bulldozers and dozens of hand crews laboriously cut a firebreak through the rugged terrain. It has cost more than $6.4 million so far to fight the fire.

Members of the U. S. Forest Service’s Burned Area Rehabilitation Team have arrived in Fillmore to assess damage from the blaze, spokeswoman Juanita Freel said.

The team’s job is to ensure that the burned area returns to its natural state. Its members evaluate the damage that bulldozers and other firefighting efforts may have caused to the landscape, she said.

Los Padres National Forest was originally established to protect water supplies, so the erosion potential of the fire will be carefully evaluated, Freel said.

About 60% of the area charred by fire was inside the national forest--the nation’s most fire-prone--and much of the thick brush in the area had not burned in about 80 years.