Pebble Beach Blaze Nears Containment

Firefighters Monday were nearing full containment of a wind-blown brush fire that destroyed 31 expensive houses, damaged six others and forced evacuation of 200 frightened people from northern Pebble Beach.

Four of the 200 firefighters working on the 150-acre blaze suffered minor injuries, and authorities said that 11 vehicles, including one Monterey County fire truck, were either damaged or destroyed by the fire, which continued to burn through rugged country nearby.

Authorities said the fire, blamed on an illegal campfire, also destroyed four outbuildings, a house trailer, a television microwave tower and the transmitters for a high school radio station and a U.S. Navy postgraduate school.

$10 Million in Damage

Damage was estimated at $10 million, and Monterey County Supervisor Karin Strasser Kauffman called on her colleagues to ask for federal disaster assistance. On Sunday, fire officials said 36 homes had been destroyed, but changed that number Monday after a house-by-house count.

The homes, valued at as much as $600,000, were not in the exclusive lower Pebble Beach area of multimillion-dollar dwellings, but in a neighborhood that overlooks the ocean at the start of the famed 17-Mile Drive and is heavily wooded with Monterey pines.

Those pines--residents need a county permit to cut them--fueled the fire, as did the wooden homes with shake shingles.

“They do try to follow a certain style and it is very attractive. It is also combustible,” Strasser Kauffman said.

Later in the day, Gov. George Deukmejian declared a state of emergency in the fire zone, which will allow the county to give residents property tax relief for damage to their homes.

The fire also knocked out power to about 225 Pacific Gas & Electric customers, but by Monday afternoon most were back in service and most telephones also were working.

George Alex of the California Department of Forestry said the fire began at a makeshift campground in a steep gully just downhill from the homes that were destroyed.

He said someone had built a fire there in a 30-gallon garbage can that had been sawed in half. Fire inspectors found mattresses and eight bottles of beer, some of them full, indicating that whoever started the fire left quickly when it got out of control.

Fanned by Winds

The first wisp of flame was first reported at about 3 p.m. Sunday, and it spread, fanned by winds rising to 35 and 40 m.p.h., burning up the side of the hill and leaping from roof to roof among the homes.

Most people were evacuated by 7 p.m., but some stayed longer.

“I soaked the roof one last time at about 7, but I knew it was gone,” said John Clark III, who was back in the area Monday, kicking through the charred debris that had been his father’s home. The only thing undisturbed was a fishpond containing several thousand dollars worth of koi.

Clark said that he and his brother carried their father, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, to safety shortly before the house began to burn.

“It was kind of a panic situation,” Clark said, and the charred remains of a wheelchair, standing the driveway, gave emphasis to his words.

Elsewhere, only incombustible items--metal lawn furniture, children’s swings and jungle-gym sets, items of plumbing, fireplaces and foundations--were identifiable among the charred spikes of the Monterey pines.

“Everything, everything is gone,” said John Panetta, nephew of Rep. Leon Panetta, (D-Monterey), whose father’s home was destroyed.

“Utter devastation--who could comprehend it?” he said.

Aided by his brother, Joe, an off-duty Monterey police officer, and their friend, Pat Homan, an off-duty Monterey County sheriff’s deputy, Panetta said they tried to use garden hoses to save the house, but were unsuccessful and later set about helping to evacuate the neighborhood.

“The wind changed and--boy--it just ran right up the hill,” Homan said.

Homan said they found one man, a cancer victim, confused and helpless in his home, unable to open his electric garage door because the power was off. He said they finally had to break the door down to free him.

He said they told another man to leave after seeing him try to fend off flames from the roof of his house with a wet towel.

Similar stories were told elsewhere.

“We’re safe,” said Dr. James Halpern, whose house was leveled by the fire, “but we lost a home, lots of photographs . . . and a lifetime of memories.”

Some who lived in the fire zone were more fortunate.

“There was just nothing more I could do but hope,” said Joseph von Schwind, whose house survived the flames. He said he left at about 8:30 p.m., after spending five hours spraying his roof with a garden hose. Just before he left, he said, he grabbed a stuffed animal that once belonged to his daughter.

“I don’t know why,” he said.

But by sunset Monday, his house was still standing, and the flames had moved on.

About 200 people evacuated from the path of the fire spent the night with friends or in a shelter set up by the Red Cross in the gymnasium at Monterey Peninsula College.

And a few were housed--without charge--at nearby motels.

Sheriff’s deputies set up barricades in the area and even residents were still barred late Monday, but many managed to return to their homes overland or via back roads.

Some of the people who live nearby did not seem to be affected at all.

At the nearby Poppy Hills Golf Course, newest of the area’s golf courses, clerk Greg Griffin said the fire sent smoke out onto the course Sunday, but it did not stop the golfers. “We were packed,” he said. He added that the course was deluged with calls Monday morning from people wanting to know whether they could still play.