Federal authorities in Los Angeles said on Wednesday that they had arrested an Uber driver who appeared to be obsessed with fire in connection with the wildfire that devastated the wealthy coastal enclave of Pacific Palisades in January.
Officials said the driver, Jonathan Rinderknecht, 29, of Melbourne, Fla., had intentionally set a fire on New Year’s Day on a hiking trail in the Santa Monica Mountains. That small blaze rekindled disastrously a week later, killing 12 people and destroying 6,837 structures, most of them houses.
In a federal complaint, prosecutors alleged that Mr. Rinderknecht, a former resident of the Palisades, dropped off a passenger on New Year’s Eve and drove toward a popular trailhead known as Skull Rock.
He then parked, tried to call a former friend and walked up the trail taking videos with an iPhone, listening on YouTube to a French rap video featuring a character setting things on fire. Then, federal authorities alleged, he set a fire himself with an open flame and called 911 to report it, but did not initially get through because he could not get cell service. As firefighters rushed to the scene, prosecutors said, he used his phone to take videos of the response.
The ensuing brush fire consumed eight acres before Los Angeles firefighters declared that it had been contained several hours later. On Jan. 7, however, a gathering windstorm reignited buried embers that had continued to smolder unbeknown to fire crews who had intermittently scoured the area for hot spots for two days.
“A single person’s recklessness caused one of the worst fires Los Angeles has ever seen,” Bill Essayli, the acting United States attorney in Los Angeles, said in a statement.
Mr. Rinderknecht was charged with destruction of property by means of fire, Mr. Essayli said. He was scheduled to make his first appearance Wednesday in United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida.
It was not immediately clear whether he had retained a lawyer.
The Palisades fire was among the most destructive in Los Angeles history, a wind-driven catastrophe that was one of at least six major fires that swept Southern California in early January. The Palisades flames consumed more than 36 square miles, leveling some of the most expensive and storied real estate in California, including parts of Topanga Canyon and Malibu.
“This tragedy will never be forgotten — lives were lost, families torn apart and entire communities forever changed — and there must be accountability,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. The arrest, he said, “marks an important step toward uncovering how the horrific Palisades fire began and bringing closure to the thousands of Californians whose lives were upended.”
The 10-month federal investigation that led to Tuesday’s arrest was one of at least a half-dozen that local, state and federal authorities began after the disaster. The first published review, a 133-page report commissioned by Los Angeles County, was released late last month, and the first phase of another, ordered by Mr. Newsom, is expected to be released soon.
The possibility that the Palisades fire might have been rooted in an earlier wildfire had been among the leading theories for months, as investigators studied the blackened hills where it started and combed through footage and data from surveillance cameras and interviewed witnesses.
Rogue embers are a common wildfire threat, and firefighters take special care to douse them, frequently using thermal imaging or keeping crews on site long after a fire is contained to find and extinguish hot spots. An investigation found that the 2023 fire that killed 100 people in Maui stemmed from the remnants of a brush fire that firefighters believed they had extinguished.
In an affidavit filed with the federal complaint, investigators said that while the firefighters quickly suppressed the Jan. 1 fire and returned the next day to make sure it was extinguished, pieces of burning wood had become buried during the firefight and were still hidden within the root structure of dense vegetation.
“Wildfires need to be 100 percent mopped up — that’s fire-service parlance for digging out every root, going down to bare mineral soil and cutting a wide, secure perimeter around the burn,” said Patrick Butler, a former assistant chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department who managed the response to many major fires in the city before becoming the fire chief in nearby Redondo Beach.
“I’ve investigated several large wildfires — many over 500 acres — that smoldered for weeks and later flared up again.”
The initial speculation had focused on the possibility that the Jan. 1 fire, known as the Lachman fire, had been caused by fireworks set off to celebrate the new year.
Terry Fahn, a Palisades resident who lost his home, said that he would be relieved to see justice done if someone started the fire on purpose. But the arrest did not assuage his fury over what he said were failures by elected leaders and state and local fire officials to prepare for and respond to the blaze that eventually became the Palisades fire.
“I’m angry that an individual would be so depraved,” he said. “It doesn’t take away from my sense of frustration and anger with government.”
Mr. Fahn rattled off a litany of concerns that community members raised in the aftermath of the fire: brush in the area was overgrown, and firefighters did not truly put out the earlier fire or adequately monitor the area afterward, even as strong winds kicked up. Firefighters later did not have adequate water to douse flames because of delayed repairs to a reservoir.
Shawn Hubler is The Times’s Los Angeles bureau chief, reporting on the news, trends and personalities of Southern California.
Jill Cowan is a Times reporter based in Los Angeles, covering the forces shaping life in Southern California and throughout the state.
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