Los Angeles Station Fire Caused By Arson – Fire Officials
September 3, 2009 by national
Filed under Incident Reports
Fire officials now say the massive Station Fire in the Angeles National Forest is the result of arson. The Station fire has been classified as an arson fire, and authorities have launched a homicide investigation.
The massive blaze, which killed two firefighters, has been under investigation for days, with the focus being on a road turnout along Angeles Crest Highway north of La Cañada Flintridge.
“Forensic examination has led this team effort to conclude …that it was an act of arson,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Steve Whitmore.
The Station fire, which has burned about 144,000 acres of the Angeles National Forest, is the largest fire in L.A. County history. Two firefighters died Sunday during a rescue effort, when their vehicle plunged down a mountain.
On Wednesday, investigators hunched under a scorched, 20-foot-tall oak tree off Angeles Crest Highway, using wire mesh sifters to search through the ash in an attempt to determine whether the Station fire was deliberately set.
Near Mile Marker 29, authorities were treating the fire’s suspected ignition site as a crime scene.
Forest Fire Jihad
We are in no way suggesting that the Station Fire is an act of terrorism, however you might recall our previous posts in 2007 & 2008 that dealt with this possibility.
In November 2008, an extremist Web site called on Muslims to launch a “forest jihad” in Australia, Europe, Russia and the United States. The posting, which quoted imprisoned Al Qaeda terrorist Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, said setting forest fires was legal under “eye-for-an-eye” Islamic law.
“Scholars have justified chopping down and burning the infidels’ forests when they do the same to our lands,” the posting read.
The author of the posting indicated that Nasar also known as Abu Musab Al-Suri was urging terrorists to use sulfuric acid or gasoline to start the fires.
“Forest fires track well with the latest discussion trends seen in the Al Qaeda forums easy to do, big impact, low security risk, high media coverage,” said Al Qaeda expert Jarret Brachman.
“We’ve seen these kinds of appeals for action, be it setting fire to forests in Australia, to creating oil slicks on mountain roads in Europe, to poisoning water supplies and driving buses off bridges in the United States.
“The fact is that the Al Qaeda ideology is starting to branch out to more of an ‘anyone, anywhere, anytime, anyhow’ approach.”
Brachman, author of “Global Jihadism: Theory and Practice,” said “forest jihad” fits well in the growing interest among terrorists to establish “Al Qaeda armies of one.”
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