Firestorms Destroy 22 Homes : Baldwin Park and La Verne Struck; Hundreds Flee

Hellish firestorms, pushed by Santa Ana winds as harsh as 100 m.p.h., destroyed 22 houses and damaged nine others in Baldwin Park and in the La Verne area early Thursday morning, forcing hundreds of residents to flee their homes.

Damage from the blazes was estimated by county fire officials at $10.5 million.

Officials said the fires devastated a commercial building and an apartment house under construction and damaged nine other apartment buildings and five commercial structures.

Hundreds of firefighters spent hours trying to keep the wind-whipped flames from hopscotching in an unpredictable path. About 400 residents were evacuated from the two San Gabriel Valley communities, many spending the night in Red Cross shelters before venturing back later in the day to see whether fire had claimed or spared their homes.

“It looked like the end of the world. It was horrible,” said one Baldwin Park homeowner, Jose Reyes.

When the winds were not whipping up fires, they were souring life for hundreds of thousands of other Southern Californians. They knocked out electrical power to more than 477,000 customers.

By Thursday afternoon, about 60,000 homes and businesses were still blacked out--including 6,500 in Baldwin Park--and several thousand customers were expected to remain without power through this morning. The Weather Service predicted the high winds would ease off a little today, but might return early next week.

The Baldwin Park fire was the most savage. Starting around midnight in a paper plant, which it gutted, the blaze spread to a surrounding neighborhood of old, lower-middle-class homes, destroying 14 and damaging five. The fire, which sent golf ball-size chunks of burning embers dancing from roof to roof, also destroyed 16 cars and damaged five commercial buildings.

A little more than an hour later, a dozen miles to the east, wind-toppled power wires touched off fires on two wooden roofs in an unincorporated neighborhood north of La Verne and western Claremont, eventually destroying eight homes.

The heavy winds spread two other major fires.

In a West Los Angeles neighborhood of densely clustered apartment buildings, a fire destroyed a nearly completed apartment building on Rochester Avenue near Federal Avenue on Wednesday night, then flared to portions of nine nearby apartment buildings, sending hundreds of residents into the streets and leaving an estimated 50 of them temporarily homeless from fire or water damage.

In Eagle Rock, four homes were slightly damaged by a 2 a.m. fire that moved along a ridge in the San Rafael Hills and spread north over 150 acres between the Ventura Freeway and Glenoaks Boulevard, into parts of Glendale and Pasadena. Officials said the blaze might have been started by an airborne spark from a neighboring blaze that had been quelled hours before.

No Major Injuries

Remarkably, there were no reports of major injuries from the winds or the fires they caused. At least two firefighters and several residents suffered eye irritation and minor smoke inhalation.

Between them, the four blazes called out 50% of all on-duty personnel of the Los Angeles city and county fire departments.

With the exception of the La Verne-area fire, investigators were not certain how the blazes began.

To some firefighters, the blazes were the same old story, replayed nearly every year, as violent Santa Ana winds turn small fires into huge headaches.

“Standard stuff--it was firestorm city,” Glendale firefighter Paul Phillips said.

To others it was more horrifying.

“First time in my 28 years in the Fire Department that I’ve seen a firestorm move through a residential area like this,” said Los Angeles County Fire Department Capt. Garry Oversby, who worked at the Baldwin Park blaze.

The winds destroyed the top two stories of an apartment building under construction in Rancho Cucamonga, causing $1 million damage. They damaged five floats being built for the Rose Parade, blowing down a giant tent in Azusa. They buffeted a Piedmont Airways jet as it approached Los Angeles International Airport on Thursday morning, causing minor injuries to two flight attendants and four passengers.

In addition, the big winds snapped eight power poles on Foothill Boulevard in La Canada Flintridge, sending two poles into a preschool and forcing cancellation of classes. They toppled two big-rig trucks on Interstates 15 and 215 in the San Bernardino area and spewed enough dust on Highway 60 in Moreno Valley to cut visibility to zero. They overturned a dump truck at an Orange County landfill. They felled 10 big trees in the gardens at Huntington Library in San Marino.

Monitoring stations did not record precise wind speeds in the pre-dawn hours Thursday, but firefighters, basing their estimates on experience, said the winds exceeded 70 and 80 m.p.h. and, in the case of Baldwin Park, were as high as 100 m.p.h.

Fire officials sharply reduced their estimate of the number of homes damaged in the Baldwin Park fire late Thursday. Earlier, they had reported as many as 35 homes damaged.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Pete Schabarum, whose district includes the San Gabriel Valley, toured the fire areas and asked that his colleagues on the Board of Supervisors declare the La Verne area and Baldwin Park to be local disaster areas. This would pave the way for the county to request Gov. George Deukmejian to declare a state of emergency, making residents eligible for state disaster assistance.

In Sacramento, the governor said an Office of Emergency Services operations center was opened to monitor the spread of the fires, the damage and the weather. “We stand prepared to immediately respond to any requests for assistance,” he said.

Residents Stick Close By

Firefighters said the Baldwin Park blaze started at the Allan Paper Recycling Co. plant at 14618 Arrow Highway. It spread rapidly south and west and quickly consumed most of the plant, along with an adjacent lumberyard, a Shell Oil Co. distribution center and two other industrial properties.

Then it moved into the residential district to the immediate south. Firefighters evacuated about 100 residents, most of whom ignored the shelter offered by the Red Cross at the Margaret Heath Elementary School. They preferred to stand out in the punishing winds and choking smoke to stay as close as possible to their homes.

“We saw sparks, showers of sparks, like rain,” said Ruben Cabadas, 18, recounting his family’s flight from their California Street home of three months as its ruins smoldered.

“It was like it was raining fire over the house,” said Elena Hidalgo, who spent the night at the Red Cross shelter with her husband, four daughters, brother, niece and mother. Like many, Hidalgo had no idea Thursday morning what had happened to the house after she fled. Firefighters permitted residents to go back into many sections later in the day.

The same nightmarish experience--chunks of fiery debris being thrown into the air toward random destinations by the heavy gusts--was described by those who fled from an upper-middle-class neighborhood in La Verne.

That blaze began in a brush-covered hillside on Williams Avenue in the unincorporated area between La Verne and Claremont. It spread rapidly south to Baseline and west along Rodeo Lane.

About 300 residents were evacuated, and about 125 of them took refuge in the Bonita High School gymnasium.

One of the eight homes gutted in La Verne belonged to Donald A. Fritz, 66, who watched from his front yard on Williams Avenue as firefighters fought a losing battle to save the place. The shake roof of the home was ignited by embers flung almost half a mile from the main body of the blaze to the north.

No Chance to React

In the high winds and low humidity, the roof was engulfed in seconds, and after that there wasn’t much the firefighters could do but save the houses next door. A neighbor’s garage burned, but otherwise the immediate neighborhood was unscathed.

“This is my house,” the stunned Fritz said. “Well, it was my house. . . .

“The phone woke me up, and it was them telling us to evacuate right away. We grabbed the dogs, some jewelry, a little cash, and got out. . . .

“When the roof started to burn, I tried to put it out with a garden hose. In this wind, it didn’t do much good. . . .

“It was just like the air was full of these giant sparks,” said Elinor Livingston, 56, as she watched insurance agents inspect the burned timbers of her ranch-style house Thursday afternoon.

“We’d put one out, and then we’d put another one out,” she said.

Like many of her La Verne-area neighbors, Livingston had climbed onto her roof with a hose. But the fire began to burn under the solar panels there and she and her husband, Roy, were forced to flee with their pet bird and two dogs.

Livingston spent what was left of Wednesday night in her car with the pets while her husband tried to sleep in his pickup truck.

The only possession salvaged was an artificial Christmas tree, still wrapped in lights and tinsel. It lay by the driveway. The presents that had been underneath the tree had burned.

The high-pressure system causing the winds is expected to continue into next week, pumping more Santa Anas into Southern California, the National Weather Service said. The high pressure also will continue to deflect badly needed Pacific storms well to the north of Southern California, further intensifying the area’s extreme fire danger.

In Chatsworth, half a dozen arson suspects were arrested hours after firefighters extinguished a five-acre brush fire of suspicious origin near Browns Canyon Road. Battalion Chief Don Mello said the fire, which posed no threat to any structures, was reported at 12:13 p.m. and was extinguished in about an hour with the aid of three helicopters and 21 fire companies.

Incendiary Device

Mello said the fire was started with an unknown incendiary device. Arson investigators detained four men and two women at the scene of the fire, but declined to name them or say whether they were to be booked.

“They are definite suspects in the fire,” Mello said. “They were found down in the gulch. They are being held during the investigation.”

Staff writers Roxane Arnold, Stephen Braun, Michael Connelly, Nieson Himmel, Carol McGraw, Frederick M. Muir, Ronald B. Taylor, Hector Tobar and Ken Yamada contributed to this article.

RED CROSS SHELTERS

The Red Cross has established three shelters for people left homeless by the fires.

La Verne: Bonita High School, D Street below Foothill Boulevard.

Pasadena: Jackie Robinson Community Center, 1040 N. Fair Oaks Ave.

West Los Angeles: National Guard Armory, 1300 Federal Way.

WIND-WHIPPED FIRES LEAVE PATHS OF DESTRUCTION

1. West Los Angeles: Fire destroyed four-story apartment complex under construction, then spread to nine other apartment buildings.

2. Glendale: Over 150 acres burned in a thin, three-mile swatch along the Ventura Freeway between Glendale and Pasadena, closing the freeway during morning rush hour. Fire threatened homes in Scholl Canyon. No damage or injuries.

3. Baldwin Park: Flames spread from paper recycling plant to adjacent lumberyard and 3 other industrial properties. Fire then spread southward to a residential area, destroying 14 homes, damaging 5 others.

4. La Verne: Fire sparked by a downed electrical line in unincorporated area between La Verne and Claremont spread quickly southward into La Verne. 150 acres burned, 8 homes destroyed, 4 damaged.