28 People Left Homeless by Panorama City Blaze

Twenty-eight people were left homeless Monday following a Panorama City fire the day before, authorities said.

Twelve adults and 16 children from five families had lived in three small houses damaged by the fire, American Red Cross spokeswoman Barbara Wilks said.

Four of the families were given shelter in a motel by the Red Cross, and the fifth planned to stay with relatives, Wilks said.

The greater-alarm fire gutted an apartment building under construction on Van Nuys Boulevard and spread to the nearby houses and a garage before 11 fire companies extinguished it about 5:30 p.m. Sunday, Los Angeles City Fire Department spokesman Jim Wells said.

Wells would say only that the fire’s cause is being investigated. But one resident, 16-year-old Rosa Gonzales, said her uncle had seen an unidentified man and a woman start what appeared to be a cooking fire on the roof of the apartment building.

Gonzales and Elena Urias, 10, were standing watch Monday over the charred house while their parents were at work. Gonzales and Urias lived in the house with six adults and seven other children.

Each said the cost to the two families who shared the house was high.

Gonzales said her family lost $2,000 in cash. Part of the money, she said, was to be used to buy a neighbor’s pickup truck--which was destroyed by the fire. Another portion of the money, Gonzalez said, was to send her back to El Salvador. Gonzales’ parents arrived in the United States before 1982, but she did not, making her ineligible for amnesty under the new federal immigration law, she said.

Urias said she still had five dresses but lost everything else, including a small stash of money that amounted to $5.05.

The youngster spent part of the day searching the house for remains of the money lost by the families, as Eli Quintanilla, 2, who is Gonzales’ half brother, ate cold corn on the cob with his soot-blackened hands.

Two firefighters sustained first- and second-degree burns on their hands, Wells said. Al Pennington, 26, was treated at a local hospital and released, he said. Art Jacinto, 40, was listed in good condition at Sherman Oaks Community Hospital, a spokeswoman there said.