Ventura County fire officials announced the cause of last year's massive Mountain Fire, which scorched more than 20,000 acres and destroyed 180 homes, saying it ignited from leftover debris from a previous, much smaller fire one week earlier.

Fire Chief Dustin Gardner said at a Friday morning news conference that arson investigators determined the Mountain Fire's most likely cause "was the extreme winds dislodging a pocket of covered hot tire debris from an earlier fire in the Balcom, Bixby area."

The earlier fire was the Oct. 30, 2024, Balcom Fire, which started when a tractor's engine caught fire while clearing brush in a Balcom Canyon field. The vegetation fire reached 1.8 acres, with arson investigators closing it the following day.

"We looked at the weather, we looked at the fuel c

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