Los Angeles authorities are investigating over 20 fires that have burned vehicles and buildings around the city in the last 48 hours, with a single arsonist suspected of lighting them all.
At least seven cars were in flames before sunrise Saturday in the North Hollywood area, added to the 21 fires that police reported Thursday night at different points around the city, the daily Los Angeles Times said Saturday.
The fires were set rapidly one after another and almost all began with a vehicle, though the flames spread in some cases to nearby houses and apartment buildings, police said.
Among the damaged properties was the one-time Hollywood Hills home of the late singer of The Doors, Jim Morrison, a place that inspired his song “Love Street.”
The authorities have not yet given an estimate of damages, though they calculate that just four of the fires, those concentrated in the West Hollywood area, left losses of some $350,000.
As the fires broke out successively in neighborhoods distant from one another, police began to theorize that they were orchestrated by the same person.
Now, however, detectives are studying the possibility that some of the fires were set by an “imitator,” someone not connected with the pyromaniac that lit the first fires, though “it’s too early to say whether we have a copycat,” the captain of the Los Angeles Fire Department, Jaime Moore, told the daily.
Los Angeles police announced this morning that it will boost the number of agents in neighborhoods that have been affected up to now, for fear more fires will be started in the coming nights.
“We believe it’s a good possibility that the individual responsible for the fires this morning is responsible for the fire that occurred tonight,” Moore said Friday.
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, has offered a reward of $60,000 for information leading to the arsonist’s arrest, and the authorities ask any witness to report to a police station.
