California fire blamed on neglected freeway landscaping

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. -- San Bernardino's top firefighter blamed neglected freeway landscaping for fueling a destructive blaze Monday that burned downtown businesses, stopped trains and sent motorists fleeing from their cars on Interstate 215. Pointing to dying brush and trees along the freeway, San Bernardino City Fire Chief Mike Conrad said Tuesday that high winds blowing through a tangle of dead oleanders, palm fronds and eucalyptus branches made the fires more fierce. "They have a lot of dead material inside them," Conrad said, noting that some of the trees and shrubs were planted 50 years ago. "We have always had a problem with those palm tree fires, even when the median was being irrigated and cared for. We still had fire in those doggone palm trees because it gets in the palm fronds up high." Conrad's comments kindled questions of who was responsible for the landscaping. Conrad said he warned Caltrans when it stopped watering the bushes and trees a year ago that it could heighten fire danger. Caltrans spokeswoman Rose Melgoza said the agency will eventually remove all of the landscaping as part of an $800 million project with San Bernardino Associated Governments to widen 7.5 miles of the freeway from just north of Interstate 10 to just past Highway 210. "Yes, it wasn't watered as much as possible," Melgoza acknowledged. "Now we will make an effort to remove any kind of fuel along the 215 so there won't be any fire danger." Melgoza said the city, under former Mayor Judith Valles, insisted that the palm trees be part of the landscape plan, arguing they are an integral part of the city's look. The widened freeway, to include two new lanes in each direction, will have space for landscaping and feature more concrete walls. Conrad said city officials are still assessing the damage from Monday's fires. He expects the cost to be in the millions. Meanwhile the weather conditions that contributed to Monday's fire could continue through Friday, Conrad said. Conrad ordered 10 off-duty firefighters and two more trucks to stand by overnight and through today. He is also sending five fire-prevention officers out to scout the city's vulnerable hillsides today in search of fires -- and in hopes of discouraging "people who would do us harm." Conrad said arson investigators are interviewing residents of the Little Mountain area looking for clues to the origin of two brush fires spotted 15 minutes apart early Tuesday morning. "It's kind of suspicious," he said by phone Tuesday afternoon. "There are no power lines in the area and they started close to residences." The two wind-whipped fires erupted a mile apart on the north and southeast side of Little Mountain, burning nearly 200 acres. The fires threatened as many as 100 homes. Cal State San Bernardino and Shandin Hills Middle School were closed as a precaution but there were no other evacuations. No structures were destroyed. Conrad said firefighters were able to get a jump on Tuesday's fires because of the extra staffing and because state and federal officials quickly dispatched 25 extra fire trucks, many of which had been pre-positioned at a base near Chino, to help fight the fires. One crew battling the Little Mountain fires had come all the way from Visalia. San Bernardino's fire siege began late Monday morning when a transient accidentally ignited a blaze while smoking beside I-215, said Jason Serrano of the city fire department. Brenton Marvin Jacques, 32, was booked into the West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga on suspicion of unlawfully causing a fire of a structure or forest land, a subsection of the reckless burning section of the Penal Code. Once that fire was extinguished, a second small fire erupted along the freeway just to the north. A third fire broke out just south of the first one at about 5:30 p.m. "That absolutely was not a rekindle," Serrano said, though investigators have not determined exactly how it began. Staff writer Richard Brooks, Imran Ghori, Kimberly Pierceall and Paul LaRocco contributed to this story.(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)