Woman, Unseen in Car, Badly Burned in Fire

An elderly woman was critically burned in a car parked at a Laguna Beach shopping center as about 40 people watched Thursday, not realizing someone was inside.

Shoppers at the Boat Canyon center at 600 N. Coast Highway noticed flames about 3:30 p.m. inside a car that appeared to be unoccupied, a witness said.

“Nobody realized that a person was inside the car,” said the witness, who asked not to be identified. “Everyone feels very guilty,” she said. Most of the workers in the small shopping center know one another, she said, and “we all sat around talking, chatting,” while the car burned.

The fire continued for about 10 minutes before firefighters arrived, although a grocery clerk unsuccessfully tried to douse the flames with a fire extinguisher.

“The firefighters didn’t see anyone inside when they arrived,” said Rich Dewberry, battalion chief.

Firefighters shattered the rear windows of the 1977 Cadillac Seville and began pouring water inside, Dewberry said. After looking in the back for passengers, the firefighters broke the front windows and put out the fire. It was only then, he said, that the woman was found held by a seat belt on the passenger side of the front seat.

Both the chief and the witness said they believed that the driver of the car was inside a market.

“It was horrible,” the witness said. “When they pulled her out I though they were pulling the front seat out, but it wasn’t.”

Dewberry said no one “suspected anyone would be in a parked car in a parking lot. Everybody is wondering the same thing.”

The cause of the fire is “still under intense investigation,” he said. He speculated that the woman may have fallen over, and that because of the car’s tinted windows, “any amount of smoke would have darkened the interior so that you couldn’t see anything.”

The woman, whose identity was withheld pending notification of relatives, was taken by helicopter to the UCI Medical Center burn unit, where officials said she was in critical condition.

“Nobody was a hero,” the witness said. “It was pitiful. I know none of the people watching would have just stood there if they had known.”

“This was so strange,” Dewberry said, especially for a car fire. “You put them out in haste,” he said of vehicle fires, “but it’s not a life-and-death matter as a rule.”