Rolling $6-Million Blaze Levels Block in Santa Ana

A spectacular Tuesday evening fire in downtown Santa Ana reduced to ashes a 204-unit apartment complex under construction, devoured half a building that once housed the Salvation Army and sent a family running for their lives as it leveled their barrio home.

Damage was estimated at $6 million but only one person--a firefighter--was reported injured.

The fire was so intense it scorched buildings more than four blocks away and sent flames high enough to be seen at John Wayne Airport 5 miles away. The huge plume of black smoke was seen in Malibu, 60 miles away.

While some neighbors frantically gathered belongings and fled, others flocked to the edge of the fire to watch the spectacle. Police tried to push back the crowds, and a police helicopter circled overhead, broadcasting pleas for spectators to leave the area for their own safety.

Two witnesses, a 7-year-old girl and a 19-year-old man, said in separate interviews that they saw boys start the blaze by dropping a match or cigarette which set a container of flammable liquid on fire. A Santa Ana Fire Department spokesman said Tuesday night that firefighters had not yet had time to investigate the cause of the fire.

The fire knocked out telephone service near 3rd Street for about 1,000 residences and businesses, and the Fire Department said service probably would not be restored for about two days. Power to the area was turned off as a precaution and was not expected to be restored until sometime today.

The Fire Department received the alarm at 5:47 p.m. and eventually 15 fire trucks--some from Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach and Newport Beach--arrived to fight the blaze. By then, the

uncompleted apartment complex, three stories of bare wooden framing atop a concrete-block parking structure, was engulfed in flames. “It burned like a campfire,” said Division Chief James Montgomery.

Some witnesses estimated that the apartment complex collapsed in only 20 minutes, leaving its site--three short blocks bounded by 3rd, French, 4th and Porter streets--hardly more than a field of embers. The fire also set the former Salvation Army building aflame at the corner of French and 4th, but a fire wall inside the structure apparently held back the flames long enough for firefighters to save half the building.

Despite the ferocity of the fire, only one person was reported injured. He was a Santa Ana firefighter who was treated and released at a hospital for heat exhaustion.

Sun Went Dark

At the southeast corner of the apartment project, 14-year-old Ruben Ruelas was playing handball outside his home when the sun went dark. He said he looked up to see a tower of black smoke and flames racing toward his house.

“I ran like hell. I was scared,” he said. The family--husband, wife and four children--grabbed the dog, got in the car and fled, unable to save anything else. The house was burned to the ground.

At Lynn’s Transmission across 4th Street from the fire, heat blew in a large plate glass window.

“The heat was so hot it was unreal,” Leonard Gomez said as he stood in glass fragments 2 inches deep on the floor.

Heat from the fire could be felt two blocks away. At their height, the flames leaped across 4th Street, throwing embers atop the roof of Kenny Nou’s one-story body and transmission shop, much of which was damaged.

“The fire came right across the street,” Nou said. “There was nothing I could do.”

A Victorian-style house on the south side of the apartment building was also destroyed as 15-m.p.h. winds carried the flames to its shake roof, said city fire spokeswoman Sharon Frank.

The Havan Club, a bar on the eastern edge of the apartment complex, was where firefighters made their stand. It apparently suffered little damage.

Greg Haenni, manager of the Thrifty Drug Store about 100 feet from the fire, said he evacuated his store after seeing the blaze. “I could not get out the back door, it was so hot. This whole back wall was smoking,” he said.

Firefighters declared the blaze contained at 8:30 p.m., nearly three hours after it started.

35% Complete

Roger Kooi, director of the city’s Downtown Development Commission, said that 35% of the 204-unit apartment building had been completed, including four stories of its frame, several walls and a subterranean garage, when the fire erupted.

The apartment project was being built by Urban Venture, a firm that has built other redevelopment projects in downtown Santa Ana, including another huge apartment complex that opened last year two blocks away from the fire scene.

The structures are part of the Courtyard Project, a massive city plan to renovate the downtown area. Blocks to the west of the fire have already undergone significant renovation, including construction of Fiesta Marketplace, a Latino-themed shopping and entertainment center scheduled to open this year.

But in the fire area, redevelopment has just begun, and areas to the west have not been touched.

Two people said in separate interviews that they had seen the fire set.

Ben Wade Jr., 19, of Santa Ana, said he was on his way to work when he said he saw two teen-age boys playing with matches behind a building at the site of the fire. He said he told them to drop the matches and that when the boys did, it ignited a container of flammable liquid. “They ran like lightning,” Wade said.

Johanna Norales, 7, who lives across 3rd Street from the apartment project, said she saw a couple of boys smoking cigarettes and that one fell and exploded a gas tank nearby.

“They said, ‘Let’s go, let’s go, there’s going to be a fire here,’ ” Johanna said.

Robert Castaneda, a security guard who patrols the building at night, said: “I was on the first level of the building when I saw the smoke coming from the top-story window. Then I saw the walls up in flames.”

He said there were no other people inside the building at the time.

Passersby Helped

Passersby, some off-duty firefighters, pitched in to help at the early stages of the battle. Wade Snow, a firefighter from Huntington Beach, was one of the first to take up a fire hose. Another was Mike Martin of Huntington Beach, a legal assistant at a nearby law firm who stood in suit and wing tip shoes, soaked to the skin.

Residents near the blaze climbed atop their houses, spraying water from garden hoses on the shingles to prevent embers from setting them afire.

Frank said firefighters were attempting to prevent the blaze from spreading to the Salvation Army office at 4th and French streets, which sustained minor smoke and water damage.

A man who worked on the initial phase of the apartment building’s construction, Dennis Delavega, said he saw the flames while driving home from work in Irvine, about 10 miles away, and rushed to the site.

“I saw all this smoke from Irvine but I didn’t know it was this building,” Delavega said.

Afternoon commuter traffic on the Santa Ana freeway was slowed by the smoke and motorists were warned to avoid the area as a heavy drape of smoke billowed over much of the downtown area, the California Highway Patrol said.

Times staff writers Jim Carlton, Eric Healy and Bob Schwartz and Times wire services contributed to this article.