With the Oakridge Park mobile home development in the San Fernando Valley looking as if it had been "hit by a nuclear bomb," and 600 of its 700 closely packed houses burned down to soft piles of ash, the Los Angeles Police Department declared the Sayre Fire a massive crime scene on Saturday.

Los Angeles City Fire Department arson teams were reportedly preparing to launch what one official said could grow into the largest arson investigation in memory, rivaling the massive manhunt to identify the person who started the horrific Laguna Beach fire of Oct. 27, 1993, that torched 441 homes.

One shell-shocked Oakridge Park victim, an unidentified woman with her hair still matted from awakening in the middle of the night to encroaching flames, told local TV stations she hopes the arsonist - if it in fact turns out to be arson - gets "strung up" so the more than 1,000 adults and children left homeless can "take hits at him."

Local residents speculated that if it was arson, a mentally troubled perpetrator may have been set on his destructive path after seeing tall walls of flame springing up in the hills above Sylmar late Friday night.There were so many fires driven by hot Santa Ana winds, including a major outbreak in Yorba Linda, that one blogger listed them all in a bleak cavalcade of bad news.

Police and fire officials pleaded with the public to stay away from the Northeast San Fernando Valley, where several key freeways were shut down for much of the day. Meanwhile, a gloom of ash spread across the entire Valley, blanketing a huge stretch of the region, home to 1.6 million residents, in grimy particles.The eerily similar Laguna Beach arson disaster of 1993 eventually drew more than a dozen investigators and included federal agencies. Orange County authorities have publicly said they believe they know who did it. A Mexican immigrant falsely confessed to the crime, but the real perpetrator was never arrested. It's now considered a cold case, like dozens of other puzzling arson disasters in Southern California.

Tags: arson, arsonist, Laguna Beach fire, Los Angeles, November 15, Oakridge Park, Sayre Fire, Southern California, Sylmar fire