County Cools Off a Bit at 105 Degrees

Parasols went up, tennis courts emptied and tomato pickers in Irvine took half the day off Tuesday as the heat wave kept its grip on Orange County.

A county high of 105 was recorded at the county Agricultural Commission offices in Anaheim Tuesday afternoon, down from Monday’s 111 degrees in San Juan Capistrano.

Elsewhere in the county, slightly cooler temperatures and a light breeze tempered things a bit. Santa Ana reported a high of 100 degrees, down from 110 Monday, and Newport Beach and Huntington Beach reported a bearable 83 degrees.

In Irvine, construction workers joked about “putting on their fur-lined vests” after Monday’s scorcher. “Yesterday was 106 degrees, miserable, with the boss all over us,” said construction worker Mike Rizo. “In comparison, today is a piece of cake.”

“Nobody is used to weather like that,” he said of Monday’s heat. “It’s just unbearable.”

‘Happy to Go’

In Irvine, 50 tomato pickers at Harvard Avenue and Barranca Parkway knocked off early to escape the heat. “It doesn’t do us any good to use workers in this heat, and they were sure happy to go,” foreman Dick Miller said.

One of the few people smiling in the swelter was Marc Oveson, manager of the Pep Boys auto parts store at 15221 Beach Blvd. in Westminster. With sales of automobile radiator coolant up 80% in the last two days, Oveson termed the heat “fantastic” and set up a new display in the middle of the store.

The hot weather is expected to continue over Southern California through the holiday on Thursday, according to the National Weather Service. A hot, dry air mass associated with a high pressure system over the desert is preventing the normal ocean breeze from bringing in cool air.

The weather service predicts sunny skies and a high in the upper 90s for both today and Thursday.

Those most endangered by the heat wave include the elderly and the very young, according to Judy Kincel, house supervisor of Mercy General Hospital in Santa Ana.

The hospital reported only one admission for heat-related problems. Hoag Memorial Hospital in Newport Beach admitted three patients with heat-related symptoms. Saddleback Community Hospital treated two patients for heat prostration and released them.

Mercy Hospital’s Kincel advised people bothered by the heat to “go someplace where it’s air conditioned” and “lay off the strenuous work if you can. This is a good time to sit home and watch TV.”

The greatest activity Tuesday was at Orange County Fire Department headquarters, where officials coordinated the battling of one big brush fire and several minor ones with a stretched-out staff. Public Information Officer Joe Kerr said the county loaned 20 fire engines and 60 firefighters to battle blazes in Ventura, San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. With the cooperation of other fire departments, however, the county still should have “as much manpower as we’re going to need,” Kerr predicted.

Air Crash Causes Fire

The biggest fire was caused by the crash of a small airplane on the Riverside Freeway near the Riverside-Orange County line. By early evening, it had burned about 500 acres and destroyed a ranch. No other buildings were reported in immediate danger.

Among the other fires were one that consumed three acres of brush in Laguna Niguel but was brought under control in an hour, and one near Live Oak Canyon Road in the unincorporated area north of El Toro that was quickly contained after burning five to seven acres of brush.

Later in the day, a fire broke out along Ortega Highway in the rugged Cleveland National Forest, two-thirds of which had been closed earlier. The blaze spread to 25 acres near the Orange County-Riverside County line, burning on both sides of the highway, officials said.

The fire, which spread through brush below the Bluebird summer camp, was being fought by Orange County, Riverside and U.S. Forest Service personnel. The Ortega Highway was closed for approximately 25 miles from Grand Avenue in Riverside County southwest into Orange County, a California Highway Patrol spokesman said.

Kerr said firefighters are stressing prevention where urban areas adjoin those with brush and dry grass. He specifically mentioned Cowan Heights, Villa Park, Yorba Linda, Mission Viejo down to San Juan Capistrano, Tustin, El Toro and Laguna Niguel as areas where “brush fires have the potential for spreading to urban tract areas.”

He added that firefighters are on “red flag alert” in Orange County because “the traditional pattern is for fires to begin in the Santa Barbara-Malibu-Ventura area, and just about the time we get those mopped up, to start spreading down in the Southland.”

Forest Closed

Because of a thinned-out firefighting staff and fire danger, park rangers of the Trabuco Ranger District closed two-thirds of the Cleveland National Forest. Park spokesman Bill Pidanick said 60,000 acres of the Trabuco district would remain closed “as long as Orange County firefighters are on loan” or until heat conditions abate.

Meanwhile, Kerr of the county Fire Department said the worst is yet to come, possibly. “On top of it all, it’s fireworks season,” he said. “We got a lot to worry about.”

Elsewhere, Los Angeles’ temperature reached 102 degrees at the Civic Center shortly after 2 p.m., equaling the old record for the day set in 1907. San Diego’s 3 p.m. reading of 94 degrees at Lindbergh Field set a new record, eclipsing the previous mark of 83 degrees for the day recorded in 1957.

As the Southland sweltered, the CHP had problems of its own: Six vehicles caught fire as the result of extreme overheating in traffic jams during the day, and a spokesman said at least 200 others stalled when cooling and air-conditioning systems were overtaxed.

No major injuries were reported in any of the incidents, but CHP officials warned motorists that any cooling system not operating at full efficiency could cause a vehicle to overheat and possibly stall if confined in slow traffic during the hot weather.