A man allegedly ignited five spot fires in a popular Riverside hiking location Friday, forcing firefighters to use off-road vehicles to reach the blazes and knock them down.
The non-injury arson fires were reported just before 7 a.m. Friday in the southeastern quarter of Sycamore Canyon Wilderness Park, near Eastridge Avenue and Lance Drive, according to the Riverside Fire Department.
Battalion Chief Bruce Vanderhorst said that six engine crews — numbering almost two-dozen personnel — were sent to the location and encountered flames burning in medium brush near the Ralphs Distribution warehouse that abuts the preserve.
Vanderhorst said crews counted a total of five spots ablaze and deployed into the brush using “two four-wheel-drive vehicles and a four-wheel-drive brush truck.”
“Firefighters developed a plan using the patrols and brush truck to make access into the area to extinguish the fires without destroying natural habitat,” he said.
While deploying into the 1,500-acre park, which is state-owned but managed by the city, crews found an “adult male who admitted to starting the fires,” according to the battalion chief.
A possible motive wasn’t mentioned. Itinerants are known to frequent the area.
Vanderhorst said that arson investigators were summoned and took the suspect, whose identity was not immediately released, into custody without incident. He was booked into the Robert Presley Jail on suspicion of multiple allegations of wildland arson.
The fires altogether scorched a half-acre. The last one was completely extinguished at 11:45 a.m., Vanderhorst said.
Sycamore Canyon, which is wedged between housing developments in the Canyon Crest and Orangecrest neighborhoods, has not been hit by brush fires since the summer of 2019, when there were two that investigators suspected were the result of human activity, though no one was arrested.
Those fires, which occurred barely two months apart, consumed a total of 500 acres, leaving burn scars that did not entirely disappear until almost four years later.