WAIALUA — A weeklong wildfire that charred more than 7,000 acres on the North Shore was intentionally set and the case has been turned over to police for further investigation, fire officials said yesterday.

The fire, fed by massive amounts of dried brush and fanned by gusty winds, chased dozens from their homes and damaged a lot of crops.

Smoke poured from the North Shore into Makaha Valley, closing two schools and a beach on the Leeward Coast.

Fire investigators determined that someone intentionally ignited a pile of dried brush on the slope of an irrigation reservoir above a Dole pineapple field, about one-fourth mile west of Kamehameha Highway and one mile east of Poamoho Gulch, Honolulu Fire Department spokesman Capt. Terry Seelig said in a release. The fire was not an agricultural burn, he said.

From there, the flames spread across fields of dried grass and brush on agriculture land and reached all the way down to the outskirts of Waialua town, where families were forced to evacuate homes on Hukilau Loop.

Strong winds and acres of dried fuel pushed the fire across Kaukonahua Road toward the Wai'anae Range, Seelig said. Steep and inaccessible terrain contributed to the fire's spread, and delayed efforts to contain it. The blaze was first reported at 1:30 p.m. Aug. 12 and was declared extinguished on Tuesday.

No homes were damaged by the fire, Seelig said.

City Councilman Donovan Dela Cruz said he was saddened to learn that someone would deliberately set a fire, an act that could only harm people and the environment.

"The fire created a lot of fear when people had to evacuate their homes," said Dela Cruz, whose district includes Wahiawa, the North Shore and 'Ahuimanu. "The farmers are going through extreme hardship. It's going to take several years to recover certain crops."

As a result of the fire, Dela Cruz said he will seek federal aid to cut down on erosion on the thousands of acres left charred and barren by the fire. A cost estimate for the project was about $150,000, based on a similar Waialua fire in 2003.

HOUSES THREATENED

Jacob Ng, a resident of Hukilau Loop, said he couldn't understand why someone would take actions that resulted in damage to farms and fields and put people at risk.

"Hukilau Loop residents could just barely escape," he said. "It was right at the boundary and a couple more feet and the houses would have gone up in flames."

Ng had a message for the culprit. Don't do it again, he said, because the next time "you might place your own family in jeopardy and you might even lose your own home."

Al Santoro, a 62-year-old farmer, said he lost half of his apple banana crop and as many as 150 papaya trees to the wildfire.

Santoro said fires have become common where he lives and farms in Poamoho Estates because of the dried grass that lines the roads and fills the fallow agriculture fields around him. While he praised the work of the firefighters, he questioned their strategy for fighting the fire.

"I'm not convinced that they are aggressive enough or that they have the necessary resources to fight the fire," Santoro said. He said the fire should not have been allowed to burn and more helicopter help should have been sought sooner. At one point, six helicopters were dousing the flames in hard-to-reach areas.

Seelig said the department would withhold comment until it could evaluate the statements and would comment when appropriate.

Identifying the cause of such a fire begins with investigators "looking at the fire scene and interviewing witnesses," Seelig said.

"Then they apply a scientific method that utilizes the gathering of information and try to identify the area of most probable origin."

The process is a narrowing down of possibilities, with investigators focusing on the area that was most likely the site of the fire based upon the first reports.

"You follow the burn patterns and start eliminating possibilities. Then you create a theory of the origin and start looking for evidence in that area."

In this case, investigators "combined field work with interviews" to come with its determination.

Seelig said he did not know specifics of who was interviewed and what evidence was obtained. It will be up to police to determine what charges to bring in the case, he said.

125 FIREFIGHTERS

At the fire's peak, emergency response included more than 125 firefighters — one-third of the HFD on-duty personnel — as well as workers from the city departments of Parks and Recreation, Transportation Services, Facilities Maintenance, police and the Board of Water Supply.

Crews from the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, Hawaiian Electric Co., the Army National Guard and state Civil Defense also assisted.

City officials said FEMA will provide funds to help defray the costs of overtime, equipment use and repair.

Reach Eloise Aguiar at eaguiar@honoluluadvertiser.com.