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Arrest Made in Wildfire in Sequoia Forest July 25, 2002 By NICK MADIGAN JOHNSONDALE, Calif., July 24 - A woman was arrested today after law enforcement officials concluded that she was the person who announced in a convenience store on Sunday that she had just set a wildfire that threatens some of the world's oldest trees. "It's taken them three days to find her," said Jim Paxon, a spokesman for the Forest Service's incident command team that is in charge of battling the fire. The blaze, called the McNalley fire, grew to more than 85 square miles today and was within striking distance of at least two groves of giant sequoias near Johnsondale, a hamlet on the western flank of the fire. It was also expanding to the north, east and south and was just 5 percent contained. "The people in the store were kind of shell shocked," Mr. Paxon said in an interview, recalling the reaction to the woman's confession. "A lady walked in, said she'd had a fight with her boyfriend and that she'd started a fire - and walked out." The woman, Teri D. VanBrunt, was being held in Bakersfield, and it was expected that she would be transferred to Fresno on Thursday. More than 1,500 firefighters, aided by 11 helicopters, 7 air tankers and about 20 bulldozers, continued to battle the flames, which swept across parched forested hillsides this afternoon within sight of Johnsondale, which lies at 4,720 feet in the southern, mountainous reaches of the Sequoia National Forest. The two sequoia groves most threatened, known as Packsaddle and Cunningham, both filled with towering trees hundreds of years old, were safe for the time being this afternoon, but fire officials emphasized that everything depended on the vagaries of the wind, and the good fortune of the firefighters. "This fire is still expanding in all four directions," Mr. Paxon said at the command center in Kernville, 27 miles south of here. "You really have to see what Mother Nature does." Still, Mr. Paxon, who gained a certain fame with television audiences during the Rodeo-Chediski fire last month in Arizona for his careful, somewhat folksy explanations of the science of fighting fires, said he was encouraged that the McNalley fire's rate of expansion seemed to have slowed. The fire began on Sunday afternoon in a camping area by the Kern River and quickly plowed through the nearby Road's End Lodge and three houses. "Within 45 minutes it was in Johnsondale, five miles away," said Danny Randall, a Bureau of Land Management employee who was assigned to the McNalley command team from his post at Tent Rocks National Monument in New Mexico. At least three of the most devastating fires so far this year - the Hayman blaze in Colorado, the Rodeo-Chediski fire in Arizona and this one - were apparently started by humans and not by lightning or other natural causes. The person charged with starting the Colorado fire worked in fire prevention for the Forest Service. Officials said the Rodeo fire was set by an out-of-work firefighter who wanted to insure that he got a jobs, and the Chediski fire, with later merged with the Rodeo one, was sparked by a lost hiker trying to get the attention of a helicopter pilot. Here in California, an escorted drive through the fire area showed now-customary scenes of abandoned towns, trailers and houses, and ash-filled moonscape hillsides that had once been filled with verdant, if dry, brush and swaying trees. Rounding a curve in the road from Kernville, a wall of fire was clearly visible on a ridge. It moved swiftly up the hillside in the 95-degree afternoon, scorching the brush, pines and firs it touched. A little farther, thick columns of smoke poured from vegetation on a steep mountainside and spiraled into the sky. The danger of more fire continued. "There's a monsoonal influence that's bringing the possibility of thunderstorms, which could bring dry lightning," said Karen Guillemin, a fire prevention specialist with the California Department of Forestry. The fire, fueled by wind blowing through the Kern River Canyon, could still move around, catching firefighters unaware, Ms. Guillemin said. "The wind always blows up the canyon during the day, and at night in the other direction," she said. "With a thunder cell over it, it could be very dangerous." Here in Johnsondale, a handful of employees of a lakeside resort were permitted to return today, three days after their evacuation, to make sure the place was safe and sound. It was. "I pretty much grabbed what I could and high-tailed it out," said Michael Stefan, 21, a security guard who has lived in a trailer for one and a half years. "The fire missed my trailer by about 60 feet." http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/25/national/25FIRE.html?ex=1028602065&ei=1&en=a66c8cc89b0399a7 HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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