From CBS News:

(CBS/AP) CBS News has learned a task force of agencies, including the FBI, ATF, the Orange County Fire Authority and the California Department of Forestry will announce shortly that the massive Santiago Canyon Fire – which has caused an estimated $10 million in damage – is being officially declared an arson, and a $50,000 reward is being offered to find the arsonist.

Investigators have identified two separate “points of origin” where they believe the fire was set, CBS News has learned. FBI agents secured the scene to “maintain its integrity.”

The Santiago Fire has burned about 19,200 acres east of Irvine, officials said, and it is around 30 percent contained. Six homes and eight outbuildings have been destroyed, with another eight homes and 12 outbuildings damaged. Four firefighters have been injured fighting the blaze and about 3,000 people evacuated.

The devastating wildfires in Southern California have caused at least $1 billion in damage in San Diego County alone, officials said Wednesday, as easing wind gave firefighters hope that they begin to gain ground against the flames.

Other blazes were believed to have been started by downed power lines and a car fire.

The fires, now in their fourth day, have destroyed 1,500 homes and caused nearly 1 million people to flee – the largest evacuation in state history. At least 1,200 of the damaged homes were in San Diego County, and officials believe that number will rise.

“Clearly, this is going to be a $1 billion or more disaster,” Ron Lane, San Diego County’s director of emergency services, told reporters during a news conference.

The announcement of San Diego’s staggering losses came as President Bush signed a major disaster declaration for California in the wake of the wildfires that have burned about 426,000 acres, or about 665 square miles.

The declaration puts in motion long-term federal recovery programs to help state and local governments, families, individuals and certain nonprofit organizations recover.

“Americans all across this land care deeply about them,” the president said after a Cabinet meeting convened to coordinate federal relief efforts. “We’re concerned about their safety. We’re concerned about their property.”

Any number of radical groups may have started the fires, but as was the case of the fires in Greece I suspect the authorities are covering up an Islamist/Marxist link. USA Today reports that a detainee at Gitmo confessed to plotting just such an attack:

PHOENIX (AP) — The FBI alerted law enforcement agencies last month that an al-Qaeda terrorist now in detention had talked of masterminding a plot to set a series of devastating forest fires around the western United States.

Rose Davis, a spokeswoman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, told The Associated Press that officials there took note of the warning but didn’t see a need to act further on it.

The contents of the June 25 memo from the FBI’s Denver office were reported Friday by The Arizona Republic. Davis declined to share a copy of the memo and an FBI spokeswoman in Denver didn’t immediately return a telephone call.

The Republic reported that the detainee, who was not identified, said the plan involved three or four people setting wildfires using timed devices in Colorado, Montana, Utah and Wyoming that would detonate in forests and grasslands after the operatives had left the country.

Pamela of Atlas Shrugs has more.

Islamists aren’t the only suspects we should consider. Eco-terrorists primarily use arson to attack targets of “human imperialism” and the building boom in the affected areas likely would have attracted the ire of more than one “rainbow warrior.” The Earth Liberation Front uses arson to destroy housing developments as a matter of course.

Marxist groups are eager to disrupt the economy and the scale of this destruction will have far reaching consequences for California and America, but perhaps the bitter irony of a eco-terror or Marxist scenario is that the arsonist would have come from the same area. It will be one of the children of the rich White liberals who allow their off spring to run amok who will have burned them out of house and home.

Michelle Malkin has reported that the SoCal fires are also arson. One man has been shot dead by police during an attempted arson and another is in custody. From The L.A. Times:

Amid worries of new blazes adding to the firestorm already afflicting the region, a man in Hesperia has been arrested on suspicion of arson, and police reported shooting and killing another arson suspect after chasing him out of scrub behind Cal State San Bernardino.

Law enforcement officials said today that they didn’t know whether either of the men had started any of the more than a dozen large fires that have devastated Southern California in recent days, including the nearby Lake Arrowhead blaze. The brush fire in Hesperia was quickly extinguished by residents.

Investigators have said that at least two of the huge wildfires, one in Orange County and the other in Temecula, were the work of arsonists.

The confrontation that ended in the shooting death started about 6 p.m. Tuesday when San Bernardino university police spotted a man in a rural area of flood channels and scrub near the campus. University police tried to detain the man, but he got into his car and fled, authorities said. When he began to ram officers’ vehicle, they shot him.

The suspect is described as a 27-year-old man with a home address in Arizona. Sheriff’s investigators will search his impounded pickup truck pending a search warrant, Lt. Scott Patterson of the San Bernardino Police Department said this afternoon.

No additional information, including his identity will be released until Thursday.

“We don’t know whether he was an arsonist,” Patterson said. “What was related by the Cal State police was that they tried to contact him as a suspicious person in a brush area. Things being how they are, there was a suspicion that he could be an arsonist.”

The area near the campus had been affected by the massive Old Fire of 2003, Patterson said, adding that “it’s very fire-prone. It’s an area that would be very devastated if a fire were to start there.”

San Bernardino police joined campus authorities in pursuit of the suspect. He drove north on Waterman Avenue and up a dirt fire road into the foothills. When officers tried to take him into custody, he began to batter officers’ vehicles with car, Patterson said. Officers shot and killed him.

A man willing to run down police in a car is up to something in my experience. Is there some sort of arson ring operating in Cali?

Update: Fox News has extensive coverage including this tidbit from Adam “Charles Barron is a Son of a Bitch” Housley’s blog revealing the identity of one of the arsonists:

We broke this story at 6am after we met some California Highway Patrol Officers still disgusted with an arrest. This morning the smoke was thick and my mask and eye protection rarely left my face. Your eyes and throat sting and it feels like standing next to a campfire when the wind changes and blows the smoke into your face, only it never ends.
While wearing this Star Wars looking get up, a patrol car looking for looters (after they had already arrested one) came upon our location. I began to talk with them and ask about their night, that’s when they told me about the guy who allegedly tried to make a horrible fire situation up here even worse. Here’s the rundown …

According to police, a man named John Alfred Rund was seen just south of Arrowhead Lake Road. Sheriff’s officials say he had just started a fire along the flat, isolated, scrubby road and witnesses said he took off on a Honda motorcycle, wearing a red and white striped helmet. A CHP helicopter, using infrared equipment, caught sight of Rund on his motorcycle and radioed to CHP officers and sheriff’s deputies. They found and arrested him at a home along Highway 173 near Highway 138. Rund is being held on $750,000 bail on suspicion of arson and is to appear in court tomorrow in Victorville.
He has not been connected with the big fires burning near the lake.

He hasn’t been connected yet. I wonder what group he’s affiliated with? Or is he just a degenerate feeding off misery and pain?

Update: Fox is reporting that Rund (or Hund) set a small fire said to be unrelated to the wildfires. He was apparently a degenerate copy cat arsonists, or that’s the word. Another man, Catalino Pineda, was arrested and is thought by media to be involved. Officials won’t confirm.

The death toll is now a eight.

The fires are still threatening thousands of homes.