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Firefighter Critical After Huntington Beach Blaze

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Times Staff Writer

An early morning fire Thursday destroyed a 60-year-old brick building in downtown Huntington Beach and left a city firefighter critically injured when one of the building’s walls partially collapsed on him.

Thomas Townsend, 46, an engineer, was walking alongside the burning two-story building near the pier, checking for utilities to be shut off when the top section of the brick wall collapsed on him, Fire Department spokeswoman Martha Werth said.

Townsend was taken to Fountain Valley Regional Hospital, where late Thursday he was still unconscious and listed in critical but stable condition with a fractured wrist, shoulder blade and spinal and head injuries, Werth said.

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Seven residents of the building on Main Street just east of Pacific Coast Highway escaped unharmed. But the white brick structure, which housed the Robert August surfboard shop, the Wild Oats shoe and swimwear store and five upstairs apartments, was destroyed. Damage was estimated at $625,000, Werth said.

A youth who stopped to watch the fire on his way to his high school physical education program’s surfing class was slightly injured when a metal gate fell on his leg. Brad Cornman, 16, of Huntington Beach said he was “getting out of the way” when a gate that firefighters were trying to slide open fell on his leg. He was taken to Pacifica Hospital in Huntington Beach and released with a sprained ankle.

The cause of the fire has not been determined, according to Gary Glenn, arson investigator. However, Werth said the blaze started behind the building in a storage shed that had no electricity. The area has a large transient population, and one tenant said he thought a transient lived in the shed.

50 Firefighters at Scene

The fire was reported about 5:45 a.m., and more than 50 Huntington Beach and Orange County firefighters battled the blaze before it was brought under control at 7 a.m., Huntington Beach Fire Chief Fred Heller said. Fire damage to the building’s old brick walls made it unsafe to enter, and firefighters were still dousing flames and knocking down the walls with high-pressure streams from water towers late in the morning before investigators were allowed in, he said.

Main Street between Pacific Coast Highway and Walnut Avenue was closed until shortly before noon.

Robert Britt, 50, of Huntington Beach apparently was the first to notice the fire, and tenants in the burning building said he may have prevented the blaze from becoming a greater tragedy. Britt said he saw “smoke and light” coming from an alley behind the building while he was on his way to work in Long Beach. After directing another passer-by to call the Fire Department, Britt said he “threw something at the (upstairs) window and yelled until they stuck their head out.”

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One of the tenants, Allyn Conley, 37, said he heard Britt yelling and noticed that his room was filling with smoke. He said he ran across the roof to the back of the building and saw that the storage shed behind the surfboard shop was burning, sending smoke into the main building.

“I ran back in and woke everyone else up and we came down the front stairs,” said Conley, who shared an apartment with his girlfriend, Nancy Beckman, 21. “All we got out with was the clothes on our back.”

Conley, who sells brooms and brass goblets at fairs and swap meets, said he lost his entire business in the fire, as well as an unnamed cat.

“There’s so many things I’m thinking of now that I should have saved. Irreplaceable, one-of-a-kind things--I’ve done a lot of traveling,” he said. “But the worst part is I just paid the rent and electricity yesterday.”

Conley and four other tenants were given food and lodging at a nearby hotel through Monday by the American Red Cross, and K mart donated clothing, Red Cross spokeswoman Sandi Lanting said.

The burned building is one of several brick structures on the block built in the late 1920s and early ‘30s that are slated to be razed and replaced by a hotel and shopping complex as part of a redevelopment project, City Administrator Charles Thompson said.

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“I can’t say that building was in imminent danger of being torn down, but it very easily could have come within the next year or year and a half,” he said.

Thompson said that the building was one of about 50 in the downtown area that the city had deemed seismically unsafe and ordered brought up to standards or demolished by their owners.

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