Less than three weeks after an arsonist believed to have set a rash of seven fires along the foothills from near Devore to Mentone was arrested, another serial arsonist believed to have started at least eight fires in the City of San Bernardino has been taken into custody.
Peter Granados, a 38-year old resident of San Bernardino, was arrested on August 23.
For the past year, San Bernardino County Fire Department investigators had tracked a subject they believed to have started more than a half dozen fires in the City of San Bernardino.
Five of the eight fires now connected to Granados were started in the foothills above Sterling Ave. and East Foothill Blvd., dating as far back as July 3, 2016. Quick response and actions of firefighters contained seven of the fires relatively soon, and they were extinguished in each of those cases before any of them consumed eight acres.
On June 27, 2017, however, following the ignition of the Mart Fire in the drainage east of Walmart at Highland Ave. and Frontage Rd., winds quickly carried embers across Hwy. 330 into the dry vegetation. The wind driven Mart Fire quickly spread the fire up the mountainside, endangering nearby homes and burning 670 acres.
On August 23, San Bernardino County Fire Division investigators, with the assistance of San Bernardino Police Department investigators, executed a search warrant in San Bernardino at Granados’ home, subsequently arresting him for arson. Upon questioning, Granados admitted to setting all eight fires, including the Mart Fire. Granados was booked into the West Valley Detention Center for PC451(d); arson, with bail set at $275,000.
Investigators determined Granados used an open flame device to light combustibles on fire. No injuries were sustained as a result of the fires.
On August 3, shortly after what has been designated the Second Bryant Fire started near Yucaipa, San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies arrested Jarrod Samra, 22, on suspicion of having set that fire when he was spotted near the conflagration. At the time of his arrest, a task force of sheriff’s department and county fire arson investigators were preparing search warrants and an arrest warrant for him. He is suspected of having set the first Bryant fire which eventually burned 76 acres in the Yucaipa/Mentone area along Highway 38 west of Bryant Street which started on July 7; a fire in Highland referred to as the Hidden Fire that started on July 12 near the bottom of the Highway 330 near Boulder Avenue, south of the Walmart Supercenter on East Highland Avenue, which charred 43 acres; the so-called Bridge Fire, which started July 14 and consumed 460 acres in a relatively sparsely populated area of East Highland before it was doused; the Seine Fire on July 22 on chaparral-covered property near Piedmont Drive and Seine Avenue, which consumed 26 acres; the Trout Fire in the Foothills above Highland on July 28 and the Helen fire near Devore which erupted three hours later but was like the Trout fire put down in rapid fashion.