Home Destroyed in Brush Fire Started by 3 Boys

Three boys playing with a cigarette lighter and matches in a fort they constructed behind a store accidentally touched off a brush fire that raced up a steep hillside in Mt. Baldy Village on Saturday, destroyed a home and forced 25 residents of other homes to evacuate, according to authorities and the mother of one of the boys.

Rich Hawkins of the U.S. Forest Service, who was directing 175 firefighters battling the blaze late Saturday afternoon, said the fire had blackened between 50 and 60 acres of steep, rugged terrain around this village of 500 that straddles the Los Angeles County and San Bernardino County line.

Hawkins said he believed firefighters, hampered by Santa Ana winds blowing the fire through mountainous terrain, will not have the blaze under control until at least Sunday night.

A 25-year-old woman who identified herself as the mother of one of the boys--an 8-year-old--said the fire spread “real fast, right up the hill to the . . . house. It didn’t take it 10 minutes to get there. And in 10 minutes more it (the house) was gone.”

The wood-and-stone dwelling was home to Stan Tibbetts, 38, and his wife and four children.

Tibbetts, who was away at the time, returned to stare as volunteer firefighters doused the smoldering ruins. “The shock hasn’t hit me yet,” he remarked. “I’ve got a lot of feelings about this house because I grew up in it.

“In 1980 (a fire) burned everything around us, but the house made it. This time it didn’t. But I’m a draftsman, and I’ll build another one right here. This time I’ll build it my way.”

He paused. “I’ll have to build a new drafting table, though.”

Tibbetts said he, his wife and three of their children were in Big Bear, where he is part-owner of a store, when he received a call about noon from his 13-year-old son, Greg.

“He said the fire was right at the house,” Tibbetts recalled. “He said he was grabbing the dogs, and then he hung up. The neighbors helped him get the dogs out. He didn’t even get his shoes.”

Bruce Bundick, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service, said one firefighter sustained a minor injury fighting the blaze, but that he had no details.

Fire officials reported other blazes--but no property damage or injuries--in San Fransisquito Canyon near Castaic where at least 25 acres were blackened and in Eagle Rock, near the Ventura Freeway and Figueroa Street, where at least 20 acres were involved.