39 cars firebombed in three days, a city on edge

Los Angeles: For all its considerable delights, Southern California always seems faintly on the cusp of an apocalypse. There are palm trees, year-round gardens and splendid weather - it was 81 degrees and sunny on Sunday - but there are also mudslides, gang shootings, wildfires and earthquakes.

On this holiday weekend, Los Angeles was dealing with a new plague, this time an arsonist (or arsonists) who in the course of three days firebombed at least 39 cars in the Los Angeles area, many of them parked in carports, engulfing vehicles and apartments in gasoline-fueled towers of flame.

For three unsettling nights, police officers and firefighters have raced around the city, always one step behind the person, or persons, who has sent people in Los Angeles to their windows repeatedly throughout the night in response to the slightest sound or change in light.

"It's pretty scary," said Rebecca Asch, 29, who lives in West Hollywood. "I have a gated garage and it's underneath my building, and if someone were to come in and light one of our cars on fire, it would probably set the whole building on fire.

"Who would do that? Who is driving around setting cars on fire?"

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That sense of confusion was heightened by the arrest early last week of two suspects in a run of arson fires in Hollywood, including a car fire. But the police do not believe there was any connection between those fires and the series of blazes that began early Friday morning.

There have been no serious injuries. Still, Los Angeles is enduring its worst fires since the riots of 1992.

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Much of the city this weekend - particularly the lush green streets of West Hollywood and Hollywood - has felt something like a war zone.

On New Year's Eve, the swell of sirens began as darkness fell and continued nearly nonstop through the night, followed by the thwacks of police helicopters flying low in search of the arsonist. Patrol cars roared through residential streets, lights off, presumably chasing the latest potential spotting of the suspect.

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What turned out to be a minor fire in a dryer at an assisted living home for the elderly in West Hollywood - wholly unrelated to the arsons - drew a veritable battalion of firefighters and 10 fire engines.

Shortly after midnight Thursday, when the attacks began in earnest, people in Hollywood, roused by sirens and helicopters, walked into the street, many in nightclothes, to see a car on the corner of Curson and Hawthorn Avenues (heretofore infamous as the site of the arrest of Hugh Grant on charges of soliciting a prostitute) in flames, sending billows of white smoke into the sky.

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Firefighters doused the car with water before carting the remains away. The next morning, all that was left was some shattered glass and a shovelful of blackened cinders.

The random nature of the attacks has caught everyone - including the police - off guard, and people are taking precautions. Yard lights are being kept on. People are parking their cars on the street, and away from their homes, in a kind of car-versus-house triage.

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Some conventional wisdom is being established by residents who have become particularly attuned in recent days to the patterns of police patrols. The sound of helicopters alone is not cause for alarm, since it is probably routine surveillance. But the sound of racing helicopters and sirens almost surely means another car has been firebombed.

Inevitably, there have been expressions of mordant, or perhaps opportunistic, humor: of leaving cars on the street in the hope that they would be the subject of the next attack, allowing their owners to claim insurance money. But mostly there was anxiety.

"I've been more vigilant the last few days," said Jon D'Amico, 46, a building manager in West Hollywood. "I've been looking around. I'm an apartment manager, so I kind of worry because there are a bunch of cars out front. I do pop my head out more and look around."

"Who is doing this?" Mr. D'Amico said, his voice tinged with anger and frustration. "Is it gang members? Is it kids out of school? They haven't given us much information, so I don't think they know much."

Cmdr. Andrew J. Smith of the Los Angeles Police Department said that investigators had yet to determine if there were one or more arsonists involved. He said investigators had a number of descriptions of potential suspects and the cars that might have been used in the arsons. The police released a surveillance video Sunday with one suspect, an older white man with a receding hairline and shoulder-length ponytail.

"I can tell you this, we have dozens of detectives - from robbery to the homicide detectives - working every night to see if we can catch these guys," Commander Smith said. "Every time he hits, we have a crime scene. They interrogate everyone around."

Erik Scott, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department, said officials did not have a precise count on how many buildings had been seriously damaged and how many people had been displaced. "Most of these were automobile fires, many of them underneath apartments or resident which were also subsequently damaged," he said.

After years of declining crime rates, the Police Department is well regarded here, and many people said they were confident that it would soon solve the case.

"I think they have a pretty good reputation to catch arsonists pretty quickly," said Darla Brunner, 53, who lives in North Hollywood. "I don't think people can keep doing this and get away with it. I do expect them to find the culprit pretty quickly."

Others, though, were concerned that the case would prove difficult to solve. "I think it's got to be hard to find the person who's doing this," Ms. Asch said. "It's like a phantom just running around setting cars on fire.

"It's got to be tough to find them. I know they're trying. There were a ton of cops out last night."