Raymond Lee Oyler

By Dan Whitcomb
LOS ANGELES - A California car mechanic will be charged with setting a wildfire that killed five firefighters, destroyed 34 homes and charred an area nearly three times the size of Manhattan, authorities said on Thursday.

Raymond Lee Oyler, already in custody on suspicion of setting two brush fires earlier this year, was expected to face murder and arson charges in the so-called Esperanza Fire, which broke out last week and blackened some 63 square miles (160 sq km) before it was contained on Monday.
"It is important to note that the charges we are filing today include the possibility of life in prison without the possibility of parole as one possible sentence as well as death," Riverside County Deputy District Attorney Rod Pacheco told reporters.
Pacheco said his office had not yet determined whether they would seek the death penalty against Oyler, 36, who lives in Beaumont, about 12 miles from the town of Cabazon, where investigators say the fire was started last week.
Oyler, who had been identified by investigators as a "person of interest," was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of setting two brush fires.
Officials had issued a $500,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the fire. It was not immediately clear if a tip from the public lead to Oyler's arrest.
The five firefighters, part of a U.S. Forest Service crew, were overtaken by flames after leaving their engine to defend homes on a ridge.
Four of the men, 43-year-old Mark Loutzenhiser; Jason McKay and Jess McLean, both 27; and Daniel Hoover-Najera, 20, died shortly after being rushed to a local hospital with critical burns. The fifth, 23-year-old Pablo Cerda, died on Tuesday.
It was the worst tragedy to befall the Forest Service in a single wildfire since 1994, when 14 firefighters were killed in Colorado.
Though the firefighters' deaths stunned Southern Californians, the blaze did not match the destruction of wildfires in the state in October 2003.
Those fires burned for days outside Los Angeles and near San Diego, killing 24 people, destroying more than 3,000 homes and burning some 740,000 acres.