SAN DIEGO -- For the first time, investigators looking into last October's deadly Cedar fire have officially pointed to a lost hunter as the man responsible for the blaze.

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A report prepared for the U.S. Forest Service that was commissioned to detail firefighting strategies states that "the fire was started by a lost hunter as a means of being found," according to The San Diego Union-Tribune.

The report supports earlier claims and reports.

The document was prepared by the Marin County Fire Department's mapping and analysis unit and was presented in Los Angeles last week during hearings held by a blue-ribbon state panel investigating the Southern California firestorms, the newspaper reported.

Despite the report, the investigation into the cause of the Cedar fire remains open, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office, which has jurisdiction over the case because the fire started on federal land.

Although he is not named in the new document, the hunter has been identified as Sergio Martinez of West Covina, a city about 25 miles east of Los Angeles.

Martinez, 33, was rescued by a sheriff's helicopter crew near the fire's point of origin, in the Cleveland National Forest near Cedar Creek.

The genesis of the Cedar fire is one of many topics examined by the governor's Blue Ribbon Fire Commission.