LOS ANGELES: A looter disguised himself as a firefighter to raid a home around fire-wrecked Malibu, police said on Sunday (Jan 12).
The alleged raider was one of more than two dozen people arrested as huge blazes ripped through the Los Angeles area, with evacuees on edge over the safety of homes they were forced to flee.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said his deputies stopped the man in the Palisades Fire evacuation zone, which extends into Malibu.
“I saw a gentleman that looked like a firefighter, and I asked him if he was okay because he was sitting down,” Luna told a press conference.
“I didn’t realise we had him in handcuffs. We were turning him over to (the Los Angeles Police Department) because he was dressed like a fireman and he was not.
“He just got caught (burgling) a home.”
Luna’s opposite number at the Los Angeles Police Department, Jim McDonnell, said investigating officers determined he was one of three people who had been driving around the ruined neighbourhood.
A night-time curfew is in place across the disaster zones around Pacific Palisades and Altadena, where two fires have laid waste to whole communities.
City and county officials have repeatedly warned that anyone in the evacuation areas between 6pm and 6am is going to be collared.
For the man allegedly preying on victims by pretending to be a first responder, the penalty could be even stiffer, said McDonnell.
Officers arrested him additionally for impersonating a firefighter, he said, a crime that could result in a year in jail.
“We have people who will go to all ends … to exploit the victims of this tragedy,” McDonnell said.
More than 100,000 people remain evacuated from multiple disaster zones that cover 40,000 acres around Los Angeles.
The fires have killed at least 16 people, with many more unaccounted for.
They have also destroyed more than 12,000 structures, including hundreds of homes.