By David Rolland
Four West Marin teenagers admitted Tuesday to building the illegal campfire on Mount Vision that sparked the most destructive wildfire ever recorded on Inverness Ridge.

Tomales Bay State Park Ranger Carlos Porrata, one of the investigators on the blaze, told The Light Tuesday that he had the names of the four before they approached authorities on their own.

The four -- all boys aged 14 and 15 -- camped overnight on Saturday, Sept. 30, near the Federal Aviation Administration facility atop Mount Vision on Tomales Bay State Park land.

The youths told investigators they made a genuine attempt to extinguish the campfire before leaving the site Sunday morning.

Love, one of the first firefighters at the site last Tuesday, said the campfire had been covered with layers of dirt and rocks. He added that he saw a handprint on the pile, suggesting that one of the campers had felt around for any residual heat.

He said, however, that the fire "burned like a cigarette under the dust." Upon surfacing two days later, the flames were swept up by strong winds.

"[The kids] just got burned," Love said. "It wasn't even careless. It was just ignorant. They shouldn't have been there, and they made a stupid mistake, but they didn't intend for this to happen."

The campers have been arrested on charges of reckless burning and building an illegal campfire.

The names of the youths are being withheld. County Fire Marshal Jack Rosevear said they have expressed "great remorse."

While the wildfire's origins were innocent, it nonetheless did extensive damage to parkland and private property, destroying 45 homes in the Paradise Ranch Estates subdivision of Inverness Park.

By the time firefighters controlled the blaze Monday night, it had consumed 12,354 acres of forest and brushland, most of that in the Point Reyes National Seashore. An estimated 650 people were evacuated from Inverness and Inverness Park.

Much of the devastation -- 7,251 acres, or about 60 percent of the burned area -- occurred Wednesday. For most of the day, ranchers on Point Reyes plus Marin and state Forestry firefighters defended the Murphy Ranch adjacent to Drake's Estero.

The fire ultimately blackened more than 500 acres of the 3,000-acre ranch. However, no buildings were damaged, and while the livestock were scared they were otherwise unscathed.

"The ranchers pretty much saved the day here," she said, expressing her gratitude to members of the McDonald, Nunes, Grossi, Rogers, Evans, Mendoza, Kehoe, Lunny, Chase, Giddings, and Arndt families, who started a fire break that eventually saved the ranch.

Once the Murphy Ranch was out of danger, the same group of ranchers the next day went east to Olema Valley, where they helped evacuate a herd of Black Angus cattle on the Vedanta Society's property.

Firefighters use a mathematical equation known as the Ignition Component to gauge the intensity of a fire. The equation considers temperature, wind speed, and humidity to determine how many flying embers out of 100 would spark a new fire.

Despite the loss of property, Supervisor Gary Giacomini said at a public meeting Sunday that Seashore Superintendent Don Neubacher deserves credit for limiting the destruction.

"If we had a different superintendent, we would have lost Inverness," Giacomini said, explaining that Neubacher wanted firefighters deployed first to protect homes, not the park.

"We would have split our resources to save the park," the supervisor said. "There were horrible decisions to be made with this monster."

The "monster" eventually burned 15 percent of the Point Reyes National Seashore and roughly 3 percent of Marin County. More than a week after the fire ignited, small spot fires still burn at various locations in the park.

No injuries to residents were reported. Firefighters complained of just 16 minor injuries, the worst being muscle pulls and sprains.

Firefighters were able to contain the blaze Saturday, thanks in part to a fog that began creeping in off the ocean last Thursday. The drop in wind smothered much of the northern Bay Area in smoke, and dropped ash in Point Reyes Station, Olema, and as far east as Novato.

Coupled with dipping temperature, the reduced wind "takes the blow torch out... and reduces the fire to something you can attack, or at least catch up to," said Incident Commander Tom Tarp of the state Department of Forestry.

Had the dry winds blowing from the northeast kept up for a couple of more days, the devastation would have been far worse. Fire strategists had four contingency plans for stopping the blaze at locations, including Highway 1 in Olema Valley and in the Seashore just north of Bolinas.

If weather patterns hadn't changed, Tarp said, "it's entirely possible this could have gone all the way to Bolinas" and east of Highway 1 toward the San Geronimo Valley.

Tarp said Forestry officials gave West Marin top priority in the state, and that the fire here would have retained that priority even if serious fire were to break out elsewhere.

"It's nice to have a lot of toys," the commander said. "If I had asked for a battleship off the coast here, all they would have asked is, ÔWhat color and what kind?'"

Luckily, warships off Limantour beach weren't necessary to hold the fire at Sky Trail, which turned out to be the blaze's southernmost boundary.

"The retardant bought us time to construct the line," Tarp said, adding that crews started backfires to keep the blaze at bay. Ironically, crews could not keep a backfire burning on one quarter-mile stretch because of damp weather and moist vegetation. Instead they built a fire break by hand.

The southern front was the last trouble spot. To the northeast, firefighters "tied off" Dream Farm Lane and Inverness' Highland Avenue on Thursday evening, Tarp said.

As of Monday, six crews and six engines were still stationed at the top of Dream Farm Lane in case a new fire sparked up. Park Service rangers will be on the scene at least until the beginning of next week.

Firefighter Love and his crew extinguished the initial 2.5-acre fire. But dry 50-mph winds blew embers across a ravine, and suddenly a new fire broke out in an area that firefighters had difficulty reaching. From there, the fire sped south toward upper Paradise Ranch Estates.

Sheriff's deputies Bob Anderson and Gerry Jones began evacuating Paradise Ranch Estates at 4:27 p.m. Anderson told The Light Tuesday that Dan Liebermann, a resident at 200 Sunnyside Dr., came running down the street saying there was smoke behind his house.

Noting that the buildup of dead wood in the forest had made a wildfire inevitable, Liebermann castigated late developer David Adams for being "stupid enough to call it Paradise Ranch Estates... It was a fool's paradise. It should have been called ÔPair of Dice Estates.'"

Not all residents were satisfied with the time given them to evacuate. Two women complained at a public meeting Sunday evening that they weren't notified early enough that the fire was worth worrying about.

"We were told it was not coming our way, and we lost everything," said Maryann Warren, a resident of 415 Drake's View Dr.

Minutes after Schweiger evacuated, neighbor Liebermann's propane tank exploded right next to her house.

Despite the complaints, numerous residents have said that Paradise Ranch Estates was perhaps the most prepared community in West Marin for a disaster.

Many neighbors were connected by a CB network, and resident Russell Ridge told The Light he began broadcasting information via CB at about 2:30 p.m.

Also, a fire siren was installed last year (although some residents reported not hearing it), escape routes were mapped, and a monthly newsletter was circulated containing a wide variety of disaster-planning tips.

Although his wife Margaret once chaired the disaster planning committee, which stresses the importance of quick evacuation, Ridge admitted he didn't follow the advice.

Whenever deputies, patrolmen, or park rangers came to Ridge's driveway, "I ducked behind the house," he said. "I was going to stick it out. It was kind of foolish."

He finally evacuated at 8:30 p.m. He came back the next morning to find his house at 260 Drake's View Dr. still standing.

Light reporter Lori Eppstein and editor Dave Mitchell contributed to this article.