California IN BRIEF : OAKLAND : No Criminal Link to Deadly Fire

No evidence of criminal activity has turned up in the investigation of the firestorm that ravaged the Oakland hills last month. But investigators continue to believe that “someone, either carelessly or intentionally, started the fire,” said Oakland Fire Inspector Don Iverson. Investigators had focused on a debris-strewn patch of hillside where three construction workers were building a cabin when the fire first erupted. But the workers and the property’s owner passed polygraph tests, officials said. Investigators believe that the four were close to the start of the small brush fire Oct. 19 that rekindled the next day into a conflagration that killed 25 people and destroyed more than 3,000 homes and apartments.