Investigators need witnesses, leads to find interstate arsonists

Investigators hope they can identify the two men suspected of setting a string of brush fires Tuesday along Interstate 5 before they strike again.

But with only a vague description of the suspects and their car, as well as a single fingerprint, the Washington State Patrol concedes they don’t have much to go on.

“We don’t have a [license] plate. We don’t have a state that the vehicle is registered to. We really don’t have anything,” State Patrol spokeswoman Trooper Heather Axtman said Wednesday morning. “The hope is they don’t do anything today and a witness can come forward and help us.”

The two men, both described as in their 50s, were seen in a light-colored Hyundai Sonata, said Axtman. While the fingerprint found on an expended flare may be a promising clue, it will take state scientists days, if not weeks, to analyze it , she said.

The two men are suspected of lighting the fires Tuesday afternoon along an 11-mile stretch of Interstate 5 in Snohomish County.

The 10 small blazes, set one after another in tinder-dry brush along the interstate, stretched from Everett to Arlington and caused a traffic backup that stretched to nine miles, according to the State Patrol.

Firefighters and law enforcement spent more than two hours running from fire to fire, initially uncertain whether the blazes were related. At one point, Axtman characterized the spate of fires as “bizarre.”

But as the fires continued to ignite along the freeway corridor, authorities suspected they were likely the work of an arsonist.

Finally, a sheriff’s deputy spotted a man apparently trying to ignite a fire with a road flare just off the interstate at milepost 218, Axtman said. When the man saw that he had been spotted, he jumped into the driver’s seat of a light-colored Hyundai Sonata and sped off, she said.

The driver was described as being in his 50s with light-colored, or blond, hair. An older man was seated in the passenger seat, Axtman said.

Axtman said the State Patrol managed to pull the fingerprint from the flare and hope to use it to identify the driver.

As firefighting crews from Everett and other departments responded to the blazes, traffic was halted because of the smoke and emergency response. The backup on southbound I-5 through Marysville took more than two hours to dissipate.

Axtman said the fires went as far north as milepost 207, near Smokey Point, and as far south as milepost 196, near the Snohomish River Bridge in Everett.

While battling the brush fires along the freeway, fire crews were called to a semitruck fire at Donna’s Travel Plaza, a truck stop at 3104 116th St. N.E. in Tulalip. The semitruck parked near the fuel pumps was engulfed in flames when firefighters responded.

The cause of the truck fire is unclear, but it is not believed related to the arsons, the State Patrol said.

No one was injured in the fires, authorities said.

The blazes only added to the heavy workload in what has already been a busy year for Marysville firefighters, according to city Fire Marshal Tom Maloney.

In the first six months of the year, the Marysville Fire Department responded to 120 fire calls, nearly double the number of fire calls in all of 2014.

Anyone with information on the freeway arsons is asked to call the Washington State Patrol at 360-654-1204.