As Santa Barbara County firefighters are busy battling the largest wildfire currently burning in the state — the nearly 29,000-acre Lake Fire north of Los Olivos — UC Santa Barbara Police Department on Wednesday afternoon received a report of an arson fire at the North Campus Open Space west of Isla Vista.
At around 3:40 p.m., firefighters responded to the blaze, which burned approximately 50 square yards of vegetation west of West Campus Family Housing, according to an alert sent to the UCSB community. Witnesses reported seeing a person of interest — described as a male subject wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and black neck gaiter covering his face — leaving the area of the arson on a black bicycle westbound toward Ellwood. A skateboard was attached to the front handlebars of the bicycle, according to witnesses.
Wednesday’s fire comes on the heels of multiple reports of arson in and around Isla Vista on July 3 , including a couch fire, two dumpster fires, and a fire in the bushes of Goleta’s Girsh Park, as well as arson fires involving a picnic table near the Storke Family Housing on March 12 and a burnt trampoline at the Family Housing Playground on June 9, according to a previous UCSB alert. It is currently unclear if any of those incidents are related to each other or this Wednesday’s fire.