Dry Winds Fan Flames in Angeles Forest Fire

A brush fire fanned by warm, dry winds in the Angeles National Forest continued to burn out of control Monday, charring nearly 10,000 acres of rugged terrain near Castaic Lake.

There were no reports of serious injuries as 700 firefighters, 12 aerial tankers and six helicopters worked in 100-degree temperatures to ring the blaze, officials said. Though the fire burned through remote Ruby Canyon, roads in the area were closed and two Los Angeles County juvenile probation camps were evacuated Monday. A county alcohol rehabilitation center was evacuated Sunday night.

None of those structures was damaged by the fire, but an unused 50-year-old U.S. Forest Service lookout tower at Warm Springs burned to the ground, officials said.

The cause of the fire, which erupted Sunday morning, was under investigation.

Difficult Task

“The front line of the fire (near the eastern branch of Castaic Lake) is defying all our efforts,” Forest Service spokesman Robert Brady said. “It is wide open along the southwest, just too hot to go in at and do anything other than flanking efforts.”

“A fire of this magnitude generates its own winds,” Los Angeles County Fire Inspector Justin DeMello said. “That means it can go any way it wants. It makes it very unpredictable. . . . “

The fire was fanned Sunday evening and Monday afternoon by light Santa Ana winds, fire officials said. The dry winds out of the northeast helped keep away sea breezes that firefighters hoped would slow the blaze.

“The area that is burning is very inaccessible,” said DeMello. “What we have done is to take an indirect attack. We are trying to put control lines on a perimeter around the main part of the fire.”

Still, with those efforts, officials could not say when the fire would be contained. The two juvenile rehabilitation centers evacuated Monday were Camp Mendenhall and Camp Munz, both located near the Warm Springs Rehabilitation Center on Lake Hughes Road, which was evacuated Sunday night. About 400 residents of the three facilities were moved to other county centers, officials said.

“The structures were not in real danger,” DeMello said. “It was just getting to a point that we felt uneasy about having that many people that close to a fire line.”

Meanwhile, a 19-year old Cypress man, charged Monday with setting the Silverado Canyon fires in Orange County earlier this month, was ordered not to contact his best friend, who informed on him, and to enter a drug and alcohol treatment program.

Robert Edward Lowenberg, son of Cypress Police Chief Ronald E. Lowenberg, was formally charged with arson for allegedly starting two fires Sept. 9 in the Cleveland National Forest that blackened 5,000 acres.

Forest Service officials said Lowenberg and his friend were the first to call authorities and report the fires. And they said it was Lowenberg’s friend, who has not been charged, who led authorities to Lowenberg.

At Monday’s bail hearing in Los Angeles federal court, a federal prosecutor asked that Lowenberg be ordered not to contact his friend, Richard Anthony Tafoya, 18.

“Tafoya is a witness and an informant who may have been subjected to a death threat by a member of the defendant’s family,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Stephen Wolfe. He declined to be more specific.

After the hearing, Lowenberg’s father said the allegation of a death threat against Tafoya was “ridiculous.”

And E. Thomas Barham Jr., Robert Lowenberg’s attorney, said: “Mr. Tafoya’s life was obliquely threatened--it was not a direct threat.” He declined to elaborate.

U.S. Magistrate Volney V. Brown Jr. approved the request and Barham assured him that no one from the family would contact Tafoya.

Brown set bail at $25,000.

Until he can be interviewed by a counselor for possible placement in a residential drug and alcohol treatment program, Lowenberg will remain in Terminal Island federal prison, Barham said.

Times staff writer Jane Applegate contributed to this article.