Spectacular Fire Sweeps Plaza; All 17 Shops Gutted

By NANCY WRIDE

July 12, 1985 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

A spectacular blaze swept through a Santa Ana shopping center just after midnight Thursday, gutting all 17 of its small businesses and forcing the evacuation of 200 residents.

Preliminary property damage estimates ranged from $3 million to $5 million, one fire official said, “and that is conservative.” City officials said it was the city’s most devastating commercial fire in years--perhaps two decades.

Three of 65 firefighters who battled the gigantic flames at the Pioneer Town shopping plaza suffered minor injuries, but no other injuries were reported.

Power Shut Down

Residents were evacuated from an 18-unit apartment building abutting the center, as well as from scores of homes on two surrounding streets as the fire roared through the plaza. Some of the evacuations were prompted by a shutdown of power for several blocks around the blaze. Fifteen of the evacuees were housed by the American Red Cross at a nearby junior high school.

Two-story-high plumes of flames and smoke were visible from the nearby Santa Ana Freeway, attracting hundreds of curious spectators. Before it was contained, the fire burned for 3 1/2 hours from one end of the 37,000-square-foot shopping center building to the other, leaving nothing but a black skeleton of wood beams.

“It’s a catastrophe,” Santa Ana City Manager Robert Bobb said after touring the site Thursday morning.

May Have Started in Attic

Santa Ana Fire Department investigators said they had not determined what sparked the fire but believe it started in the attic or interior of Parts Plus, an auto supply shop. Bobb said preliminary reports from a fire inspector Thursday morning suggested “it might be an electrical wiring short” in the attic of the shop.

Investigators confirmed that a small fire--possibly triggered by a cigarette thrown into an alley trash can--had broken out at the same shop a few weeks ago, but they called it unrelated.

Though some of the merchants hailed firefighters’ efforts, others--some of whom watched their businesses burn down --criticized the Fire Department for forbidding them to retrieve property before flames reached their shops. Some of them also charged that firefighters could have saved at least part of the 25-year-old rectangular building at 1002 E. 17th St. had they moved faster or called in more help.

But city and fire officials--who met with the merchants early Thursday to address their concerns and provide information about low-interest city loans--said it would have been unsafe to allow shop owners into a still-burning building, and that firefighters did a “commendable job” in squelching the fire before it spread to dwellings surrounding the plaza.

The building, which has been remodeled more than once in recent years, had an open attic through which the fire raced.

“Though you may not have had a fire visible to those outside, clearly there was danger,” Bobb said.

“I can understand their concern,” Deputy Fire Chief Bill Reedy said Thursday of the merchants, “but the only thing I can tell you is we followed good firefighting practices. I’ve had questions on why we didn’t do this, why we didn’t do that. The way we fight attic fires, which is what that was, you have to come up under it and (also attack from) the roof. We attempted that on at least three different areas and for whatever reason we just couldn’t stop the fire.”

The fire was first reported at 11:26 p.m. Wednesday and a second alarm was sounded a short time later, Reedy said. He added that 17 trucks were dispatched to the scene and a task force from the Orange County Fire Department was later called in for support.

Employees at a McDonald’s across the street, who gathered around the restaurant playground waiting for power to be restored, said they first saw smoke billowing from the front and top of Parts Plus sometime after 11:30 p.m. The shop is two doors down from the Licorice Pizza Music Store, the largest unit of the complex and most visible from 17th Street.

“It was smoky in there, and then (the smoke) started coming out the ceiling,” said Michelle Kolmos, 17, of Anaheim Hills, shift manager at McDonald’s. “Then there was a single flame and an explosion. Then it was just all over Licorice Pizza.”

Lee Cohen, executive vice president of the Los Angeles-based record store chain, placed losses to the 6,000-square-foot store at nearly $500,000 after surveying the shop. A company spokeswoman called it “a total loss.”

Other merchants fared still worse. In what City Manager Bobb called the fire’s greatest “tragedy,” Ingrid Guril, a native of Germany, lost her European Car Accessory business, which occupied two units of the building and provided such wares as 1948 Volkswagen parts. She estimated her losses at $1.5 million and said she was not insured.

As the fire progressed, residents routed from their homes shunned the evacuation center for the most part, choosing instead to watch the hissing blaze from street corners. For hours, they swapped accounts of how they learned of the fire and bemoaned the loss of their local beauty parlor, cafe and square-dancing hall.

Leslie Smith, 50, said he was in bed in his second-floor apartment behind the shopping center when he heard “some funny noises.”

“I happened to look up and saw a sheet of orange and I said, ‘that isn’t the moon.’ ”

Smith, a mail clerk, said he hurried down to the alley behind the shopping complex and began touching doors.

“The first door was cold; the second one was cold, the third one,” Smith said with a chuckle, “was pretty hot.” He awakened his neighbors in the 18-unit building, several of them elderly and feeble, and the residents fled.

An hour into the fire, they huddled on a patch of lawn behind their apartment building and gazed at the soaring flames.

“Oh, no! It got the beauty shop, too,” said silver-haired Emelym Zirkel, a polio victim who leaned on a cane for support. “Now where am I going to have my hair done?”

Sitting nearby in a wheelchair and dressed in a nightshirt, Lupe Ramos, 31, said she rolled out of her home at 822 East 17th St. when her power went out, stopping her fan. “I got so hot in there I decided to come out and see what had happened,” said Ramos, who has been crippled since birth. “I couldn’t believe it was a fire!”

Police closed 17th Street for several blocks between Lincoln and Santiago avenues as fire trucks continued to arrive from all directions. The street was reopened about 6 a.m., but traffic inched along the busy thoroughfare throughout the day as motorists slowed to gawk at the rubble.

Fire officials said they did not know when the shopping center had last undergone a fire and building safety inspection, but Deputy Chief Reedy said the structure has not had a history of fire code violations “to the best of my knowledge.”

Howard Rubinstein, a spokesman for the Realty Co. of America, the firm that owns the shopping plaza, said the company has not been notified of any fire code violations since the complex was purchased five years ago. He said the company intends to rebuild on the property “immediately.”

By mid-morning Thursday, a dozen dismal-faced merchants gathered on a curb at the rear of the shopping plaza, waiting for permission to venture into what little remained of their businesses. Some of them met with insurance agents and chatted with fire investigators, while others tried to ward off public claims adjustors who flocked to the site.

A few of the fire victims even managed a sense of humor.

When the mailman pulled his truck to the curb, he was greeted with smiles and jokes.

“I guess we’re making your job easy today,” said Glenda Embick, who owned a blueprint business with her husband. “You can put, ‘moved, no forwarding address,’ on the bills.”

May Fan owned Chef’s Cafe with her husband, Tony. She found the breakfast-and-lunch diner leveled when she arrived at the plaza about 7 a.m. “Uh, I guess now we are looking for job!” she said. Fan immigrated from Taiwan a decade ago and has owned the shop for three years. “We just bought new steam table and were working very hard, and now,” she said, waving her hand, “bye-bye--all gone.”

Fan was one of the fortunate merchants, for she is insured. Ingrid Guril could do nothing but weep most of Thursday as she watched tractors roll into the plaza parking lot before what remained of the building was razed.

“After 16 years in this place, I decided I would run my business by mail order to save overhead,” Guril said, rubbing her eyes. “My lease was up in August and I canceled my insurance two months ago to, you know, save money. I had stuff in there like your grandmother’s heirlooms that you couldn’t replace. Now I have nothing.”

Times staff writer Michael Bunch contributed to this story. Stores destroyed at Pioneer Town

- ABC Blue Print Co.

- Army and Navy Store

- Gilbert’s Barber Shop

- Champion Trophies

- Chef’s Cafe

- D and H Appliances

- European Car Accessory

- Evictors Law Center of Orange County

- USA Hair

- Licorice Pizza Music Center

- Lutheran Social Services Thrift Shop