LOS ANGELES — Federal authorities in Los Angeles said Wednesday that they had arrested a 29-year-old man who appeared to be obsessed with fire in connection with the wildfire that devastated the Pacific Palisades in January.

Officials said the man, Jonathan Rinderknecht of Melbourne, Florida, had intentionally set a fire on New Year’s Day on a hiking trail in the Santa Monica Mountains. That small blaze rekindled disastrously a week later into the Palisades fire, killing 12 people and destroying 6,837 structures, most of them homes.

In a federal complaint, prosecutors alleged that Rinderknecht, an Uber driver and a former resident of the Palisades, dropped off a passenger on New Year’s Eve and drove toward a popular trailhead known as Skull Rock.

He then parked, tried to call a former f

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