Old Fire

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Old Fire

Location	San Bernardino Mountains
Date	October 25, 2003 17:37 (PDT)
Acres burned	91,281 acres (369.4 km²)
Ignition Source	Arson
Land use	Mixed, residential and wildlands
Fatalities	6
Perpetrator(s)	Raymond Lee Oyler
Motive	Arson

The Old Fire was a wildfire that started on October 25, 2003 in the San Bernardino Mountains of the U.S. state of California. It was one of at least a dozen wildfires burning around Southern California at this time (which included the Cedar Fire, the second largest fire in California history). Fanned by the Santa Ana winds, the fire burned 91,281 acres (369.4 km²), destroyed 993 homes and caused 6 deaths. The final cost of the fire was $42 million dollars. It should be noted that a USFS report on the "true" combined costs of the 2003 Old Fire, Padua, and the Grand Prix wildfires which burned at the same time was nearly $1.3 Billion. When cleanup, watershed damages and other costs are considered beyond the mere "bill" for firefighting and property damage, wildfire impacts are much higher than many realize.

The fire threatened San Bernardino and Highland, as well as the mountain resort communities of Crestline, Running Springs and Lake Arrowhead and forcing upwards of 80,000 residents to evacuate their homes.

Calls to investigate the Cedar Glen incident were ignored by the Department of Justice, the Forestry Service, the Department of Agriculture, the FBI, the San Bernardino Board of Supervisors and Barbara Boxer. The community is now part of a Redevelopment Agency which is controlled by a Board of Supervisors.

The suspected cause of this fire was arson.

On November 11, 2006 It was announced that Raymond Lee Oyler, of Beaumont, California, was suspected of starting the Old Fire.^[1]