Street of Dreams builders vow to return

Published 10:54 pm Thursday, March 6, 2008

MALTBY — The builders of the luxury homes torched by arsonists earlier this week look forward to the day when they again can celebrate on the cul de sac near Echo Lake.

They hope to rebuild and one day throw a block party.

“It’s going to be a great place,” Snohomish builder Todd Lockie said Thursday. While only the facade remains on the home he built as part of the 2007 Street of Dreams, he said he wants it to stand whole again.

“If I can come up with the money to do it, I will,” he said.

Federal investigators packed up their equipment Thursday morning and turned over to the owners the ruins of what were once multimillion-dollar homes.

Three homes, including Lockie’s, each valued at nearly $2 million, were destroyed Monday. Two more homes remain standing but damaged by smoke.

Officials suspect domestic terrorists set the fires. A banner left near the cul de sac Monday was signed ELF, the initials of the Earth Liberation Front, a group that’s taken responsibility in the past for starting fires.

In 2001, ELF said it torched the University of Washington Center for Urban Horticulture in Seattle. The group has claimed responsibility for fires in Snohomish County in 2004, and a banner similar to the one left Monday near Echo Lake was found near a fire that destroyed a luxury home on Camano Island in 2006.

On Thursday, a California woman was convicted of arson in the UW horticulture center fire. Briana Waters, 32, was accused of being the lookout for the crew that caused millions of dollars in damage to the university building.

“The FBI, ATF and local law enforcement officers tenaciously followed every lead to solve this destructive string of arsons,” U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Sullivan said of the UW investigation. “This cell of ecoterrorists thought they had a ‘right’ to sit in judgment and destroy the hard work of dedicated researchers at the UW and elsewhere. Today’s verdict shows that no one is above the law.”

No arrests have been made in Monday’s fires, or any of the Snohomish or Island County blazes linked to ELF.

Still, Thursday’s conviction gave federal officials reason to be optimistic about catching someone responsible for the Street of Dreams fires.

“We’re confident we’ll solve it. At the same time we’re realistic it may take some time,” FBI spokesman Fred Gutt said.

When firefighters extinguish a blaze, investigators start sifting through the ashes looking for clues, Snohomish County Fire Marshal Tom Maloney said.

“No matter what you do, there will always be something left behind,” he said.

Specially trained to find evidence among blackened debris, fire investigators start with what remains of a property and work backward to try to determine what sparked the blaze, said Mike Makela, a deputy fire marshal.

Once the point of origin is determined, burnt materials are sent to a lab where experts can pinpoint what was used to set the fire, Makela said.

That’s what helps put arsonists behind bars, he said.

On big fires that cause more than $1 million damage or may be politically motivated, the county fire marshal’s office calls the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Federal agents, such as those who are leading the investigation into Monday’s fires, have more resources at their disposal, Makela said.

Once investigators determine how a fire started, then they need to go through the often-difficult process of pinning the act on an individual or individuals, said Jim Allen, a retired arson investigator with the California State Fire Marshal who now teaches fire investigation techniques.

“When you have a revenge-motivated offender or offenders that use fire for a political issue, they want the world to know that they set the fire,” he said. “They hide behind random acts of violence only to prove their point, and coming up with individuals gets very hard, unless you have someone who comes forward.”

Standing Thursday outside the charred remains of the home he built, Lockie said he wasn’t going to be deterred by whoever lit the fires.

“I’m not going to let little ELF people scare me away,” he said. “If they did do it, they’re evil. If it’s a builder, they’re evil too, pure evil.”

Lockie said even if he received every penny of his insurance claim, he’d likely loose close to $500,000 on the ruined home.

“I might as well tell you a billion bucks, because that’s what a half-million means to me,” he said.

He now faces the costs of demolishing and cleaning up what remains.

For builder Grey Lundberg, all that’s left of the home he built are small souvenirs: bronze door fixtures, charred pieces of wood and twisted scraps of melted glass.

He said he came Thursday to get a glimpse of what was left.

“It’s kind of hard to describe. I just wanted to be here,” he said.

He, too, wants to rebuild, he said. He surveyed the skeletal remains of what was once a dream home: The burnt, twisted metal of a gourmet stove; the pebbled flooring of the master shower; a copper ring of what was once a chandelier.

It sat in a heaped mess.

“If I could, I’d have a track hoe here tomorrow to clear this stuff out because it pains me to look at it,” Lundberg said.

Reporter Jackson Holtz: jholtz@heraldnet.com or 425-339-3437.