Truck Ignited Calabasas Fire, Woman Says

The dispute over the cause of last year’s Calabasas brush fire took a new twist Monday when a woman who says she witnessed its start stepped forward for the first time--and blamed a truck for igniting the blaze.

Carolyn Lombardo said she was traveling on the Ventura Freeway last Oct. 21 when she saw sparks spewing from a tractor-trailer’s exhaust pipe ignite roadside grass.

Her account differs from that of state fire investigators who have blamed the 13,900-acre fire on sparks from Southern California Edison Co. power lines.

Lombardo, 51, of North Hollywood, said she was unaware that there was a controversy over the fire’s cause until she learned of last week’s raids at Edison offices by investigators hunting for power line maintenance records.

California Division of Forestry officials have alleged that Edison failed to prune eucalyptus tree branches away from the 66,000-volt lines that hang alongside the Ventura Freeway between Parkway Calabasas and Las Virgenes Road.

*

Authorities contend that winds blew the branches against the electric lines, creating sparks that ignited dry grass around a 60-foot pole.

But Lombardo asserted Monday that sparks instead came from an old Kenworth truck that was laboring to pull a trailer up the Calabasas Grade on eastbound freeway lanes.

“It wasn’t a wire thing. It wasn’t electrical at all,” Lombardo said. “No one would believe how easily it started unless they saw it with their own eyes.”

Lombardo said she was traveling west on the freeway the day of the fire when she noticed the slow-moving truck chugging up the hill in the opposite direction. She was traveling to an Agoura ranch to pick up pumpkins for her daughter’s birthday party, Lombardo said, and she remembers the Santa Ana wind pushing her van around.

“I saw one of these trucks throwing out this black smoke. I’m a nit-picky environmentalist, so I was watching. When I got closer I saw sparks coming out of this thing,” Lombardo said.

“As we came toward each other this thing threw out a bunch of sparks that went into this ravine. It just exploded. By the time I got there flames as big as I am were coming out. Flames were pushing leaves into the air. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Lombardo said she left the freeway and stopped at a service station to call the Fire Department.

“I pounded on the glass and the guy opened the window and let me use the phone. I dialed 911 . . . the operator said they were getting a bunch of calls on it.”

Lombardo continued to the ranch and picked up her pumpkins. She said she told workers at the ranch what she had seen and all of them watched as aircraft began arriving to fight the growing fire.

She said it took her three hours to travel back through Calabasas to the San Fernando Valley. As traffic crept past the place where the fire had started, she said, she was tempted to stop and tell firefighters what she had seen, but did not.

Lombardo’s disclosure triggered sighs of relief at Edison offices. Employees of the utility could face jail terms and the company might be liable for the $6-million cost of fighting the fire if its negligence is found to have caused the blaze.

Edison quickly dispatched officials to interview Lombardo at the Valley Village store of which she is co-owner. Ralph Cavallo, claims manager for the utility, would not comment on Lombardo’s account.

But company spokesman Steve Conroy said Lombardo “seemed like she felt she knew what she saw” last Oct. 21.

“Certainly, we’re happy she stepped forward,” he said. “We’re obviously very happy.”

*

Forestry officials said Monday that they were also eager to interview Lombardo.

“We’ll certainly look into what she has to say,” said Karen Terrill of the Division of Forestry.

Terrill said she was not in a position “to say one way or another” whether Lombardo’s account will change the course of the fire investigation.

Previously, a Los Angeles County Fire Department probe had labeled the brush fire as “accidental in nature, caused by an electrical arc/spark malfunction involving a high voltage power line(s)” and “a lightning suppressor device” that ignited grass and brush near the pole.

A Fire Department report on the fire completed a month before last week’s raids quoted arriving firefighters as seeing “arc/sparks flashes and hot embers from the high voltage lines, coming from the lowest cross arm on the involved pole.”

The report included a notation from an independent tree expert who found that eucalyptus branches near the wires had electrical damage to them.

Lombardo said she has no connection with Edison and, in fact, stepped forward only “after my brother nagged me for three days” last week to tell what she saw at the fire scene.

She said she doubts the truck driver realized his rig was blowing sparks from its vertical exhaust pipe. She remembers seeing no writing on the side of the tractor-trailer that would identify its owner.