Jump for Life : Early Riser, Three Grown Children Barely Escape Fast-Spreading Fire

A Huntington Beach woman’s habit of waking up early probably saved her life and those of her children as they escaped a rapidly spreading fire that engulfed their two-story town house early Friday, fire officials said.

Valerie Obey, 40, barely got out the front door as the fire leaped upstairs and forced her children, Mark, 21, Melani, 20, and Scott, 17, to jump out of second-story windows, said Fire Chief Ray Picard.

The fire was so intense and moved so fast, Picard said, that Mark Obey had to abandon the telephone after dialing 911 without reporting the location of the fire. However, the emergency line’s computer had already printed out the address and telephone number of the Obey home, and firefighters were dispatched at 5:45 a.m., he said.

Blazed Confined

The Obeys were treated at the scene by paramedics for smoke inhalation, said Fire Department spokeswoman Martha Werth. Valerie Obey decided to see her own doctor, and no further medical attention was needed by the children, Werth said.

Firefighters confined the blaze to the town house at 19765 Claremont Lane, as neighbors were evacuated. The fire was under control in about 30 minutes, Werth said, but the condominium unit, which the Obeys were renting, and its contents were lost. She estimated damages at more than $100,000.

A similar blaze killed four children at the same residential complex in 1979, according to fire officials. In that fire and in Friday’s incident, residents said neither unit was equipped with smoke detector alarms.

Fire Investigator Gary Glenn termed Friday’s fire accidental but said further investigation was needed to determine the cause.

Sofa in Flames

According to fire officials, Valerie Obey awoke Friday at about 5:30 a.m. and went downstairs to get a cup of coffee. When she returned to the second level, she heard a crack and smelled smoke. She went back downstairs, saw her sofa in flames and rushed back to the bedrooms to awaken her children, telling her oldest to call the Fire Department.

When the women started back downstairs, the entire lower level was nearly engulfed in flames and she had to slide down a rail to avoid some of the flames, fire officials said. By the time the children started to leave, the fire prevented them from taking the stairs, so they jumped from bedroom windows.

“The family is lucky the mother is an early riser because they would have died,” Werth said. “There was no smoke detector in the house.”

She said three children and a niece of Bill and Carol Clarke were killed Nov. 25, 1979, when a similar flash fire trapped them in an upstairs bedroom of another condominium unit in the complex, which stretches from Brookhurst to Bushard streets and from Adams to Yorktown avenues. Bill and Carol Clarke and their two other children escaped.

Shortly after that fire, Bill Clarke said in an interview that a smoke detector--which his unit did not have--would have saved the children’s lives by alerting them to the fire sooner.

Fire officials were not surprised that the blazes in the Clarke and Obey homes moved so quickly.

Picard explained that modern synthetic materials used in carpets, furniture and clothing are petroleum-based products and conduct fire about twice as fast as traditional materials, such as cotton, wool and wood.