Fires

Cindy Harris and Doug Fieg run what they believe is the largest alpaca ranch in California. With 400 animals -- each valued at between $10,000 and $50,000 -- they decided years ago that evacuation was not an option in a brush fire. "It would take so long to evacuate them, and they get really stressed," Harris said. So when flames reached their street in Somis late Tuesday, the couple tried another strategy. They herded all 400 animals into the ranch's central pastures, turned on the irrigation system and prepared to ride out the fire as best they could.

The relentless Station fire has scoured nearly 242 square miles of the Angeles National Forest, burning through not just picnic areas and campgrounds, but the raw, solitary beauty that has long been a refuge for a sprawling city. Ridge after ridge is a ghostly gray, laid bare of vegetation from the plunging foothill canyons to the Mojave Desert. Only scattered islands of trees are un-charred -- in the deepest draws and in remote, rocky cornices on a few high ridges. "What I saw was a pretty complete burn," said U.S. Forest Service spokesman Stanton Florea.

Brother Nicholas Radelmiller tolled the bell amid the ruins of the Mt. Calvary Monastery, but no worshipers were there to hear it. Down the mountainside, workers revved up their chain saws as homeowners burned out by November's devastating Santa Barbara wildfires prepared to rebuild. But at the monastery on a promontory 1,250 feet above the sea, acres of rubble awaited the bulldozers that are to arrive this week. The fire that swept through on the night of Nov.

Raymond Lee Oyler, the Beaumont mechanic convicted of setting the 2006 Esperanza fire that killed five firefighters, was sentenced to death Friday by a judge who said the serial arsonist had set out to "create havoc." "He became more and more proficient," said Riverside County Superior Court Judge W. Charles Morgan. "He knew young men and women would put their lives on the line to protect people and property, yet he continued anyway."

State regulators performed a shoddy investigation and let UCLA off too lightly for violations stemming from a chemistry lab fire that killed a staff research assistant, the victim's family contends in papers filed with Cal-OSHA and the Occupational Safety and Health Appeals Board. Sheri Sangji, 23, suffered severe burns over 43% of her body when an experiment with air-sensitive chemicals burst into flame Dec. 29 and ignited her clothing.

Los Angeles County sheriff's detectives hope to question a man who was spotted tending a small fire in the vicinity of the Station fire almost one week before that deadly blaze erupted in the Angeles National Forest. At a news conference Monday, homicide detectives requested the public's help in locating a 25-year-old homeless man who was caught "feeding" a small, uncontrolled fire in the early afternoon of Aug. 20 -- six days before the start of the devastating Station fire. The man, Babatunsin Olukunle, a Nigerian national, was reportedly caught tending a fire near mile marker 36 of the Angeles Crest Highway.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other authorities held them up as examples of irresponsible behavior. They were the butt of jokes. But one of the two Big Tujunga Canyon residents who jumped into a hot tub to escape the raging Station fire says they are being unfairly judged. Julius Goff, who suffered serious burns, told The Times that he did not ignore a mandatory evacuation order but instead stayed behind to warn 10 neighbors who did not receive the order to leave. By the time he reached his own house, with plans to get his housemate and get out, the fire had surrounded them.

Until the evacuation orders were lifted at 10 a.m. Sunday, Paul Reide held out hope that his home on tidy, tree-lined Montrose Place in the foothills north of downtown Santa Barbara had survived last week's devastating Jesusita fire. Less than 30 minutes later, the tall, silver-haired retired salesman stood forlornly on a block of concrete that was once the foyer of the 3,000-square-foot tri-level home he liked to call "a quiet little paradise."

Narcotics agents said Tuesday they had little doubt that the nearly 90,000-acre La Brea fire was started by Mexican drug traffickers who were tending a large, sophisticated marijuana farm planted on the side of a mountain. The growers apparently fled as firefighters approached the source of the fire and are still at large, Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said. Their abandoned site was similar to other illicit plots planted by Mexican nationals and discovered by drug agents in recent years.

After barely a day of deliberation, a Riverside County jury on Wednesday returned a verdict of death for Raymond Lee Oyler for starting the 2006 Esperanza fire in the foothills of the San Jacinto Mountains that killed five firefighters, destroyed 34 homes and charred more than 41,000 acres. Firefighters and the families of the victims hailed the decision and said it offered a measure of justice for a crime they said had torn a hole in the fabric of their lives.