Fires Not Hurting Attendance at Griffith Park

Griffith Park visitors are upset and wary about a firebug who’s been trying to burn down the urban oasis, but they’re not frightened into staying away.

The nation’s largest municipal park was busy as usual Saturday with people picnicking, jogging and communing with nature. City park rangers said the number of visitors has remained normal despite 10 incidents of arson in two months at the heavily used park in the middle of Los Angeles.

“There are a lot of people who love this park and aren’t going to be scared away,” Ranger Yin Wong said.

Park-goers interviewed Saturday said they were appalled by the destructive behavior and are looking for anything suspicious. Many said they can’t fathom why anyone would target such a benign setting as a city park.

“It has gotten to the point where it’s hard for the insanity of individuals to be unbelievable anymore,” said Flori Schutzer of West Hollywood, a frequent park visitor since 1959. The notion that someone has been deliberately setting the blazes, which were quickly extinguished by firefighters, “really hits you on a gut level,” she said while strolling near the park’s golf course.

Although the fires occurred in a little-used section of the 4,127-acre park, Antonio and Gracie Torres of Atwater Village said the danger hits close to home.

“We purposely moved a mile away from here so we could come here and run,” Antonio Torres said.

The couple run almost daily while pushing their 10-month-old daughter in a stroller, and their routes include some of the dirt trails where fires have been started.

“It looked like bombs had landed there,” Gracie Torres said. “We’re very concerned, especially with our baby. Without this, we’ve always felt completely safe here.”

Officials said patrols have been stepped up in the park, which attracts 10 million visitors a year, according to its Web site. The Los Angeles City Council is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arsonist’s capture. There are no suspects.

Wong said the fires have been set in a brush-choked area below Griffith Observatory “on trails that only a person familiar with the park would know about.”

The arsonist sets the fires between noon and 5 p.m., Wong said, when low humidity encourages flames to spread. The largest fire damaged 15 acres.

“I’m sure this person is getting a lot of excitement out of watching all this equipment going out there,” Wong said.

Runner Darrell Smith of Pasadena said he is outraged and saddened that someone is torching a park that provides leafy sanctuary for thousands on any weekend or summer day.

“This is a place where it feels like you’re out in the country without leaving the city,” he said. “Every time I hear about another fire, I say, ‘Good grief, why is someone doing this?’”

Dean Joaquin of Simi Valley, said he’ll continue to visit the park with his two young children despite the fires.

“As long as the Fire Department keeps jumping on it, people won’t be scared,” he said. “If this were something to do with 9/11, people would have something to be more concerned about.”

James Murphy, a lawyer from Los Feliz out on his weekly walk near the zoo, said, like most people, he sticks to the lushly landscaped areas of the park.

“I feel safe,” he said, adding that he would probably not feel that way if he were an equestrian or hiker on the tinder-dry trails in the park’s hills.

Park visitors said they couldn’t begin to guess at the arsonist’s motive. “He must be troubled about something else to want to do this,” said Zoey Freeburn of Studio City. “This couldn’t have anything to do with Griffith Park itself.”

Jack Slusher, a Palmdale businessman out for a stroll in the sun, said he sees the fires as a sobering reminder that danger lurks in unexpected places.

“Nothing really surprises me anymore, when you have people putting razor blades in sandboxes and pipe bombs in rural mailboxes in the shape of a smiley face,” he said.

Officials are asking anyone with information on the fires to call arson investigators at (213) 485-6095.