Victims Share the Terror of Raging Flames

Pete Munoz was only hours away from fireproofing his Porter Ranch home when Friday’s brush fire set it ablaze.

Workmen had nearly finished installing a new $10,000 metal tile roof when a cascade of flaming embers ignited the wood part still uncovered. Flames burned through the attic and into his two-story home, causing heavy damage.

“For 11 years, we had a wood shake roof and thought about replacing it, and we finally were,” Munoz, 49, said sadly. “The workers had started putting on new metal tiles on Tuesday. Yesterday, it had been too windy for them to work. So they were going to finish it today.”

Munoz, a law enforcement officer, and his neighbors, who live on Beaufait Avenue next to deep Aliso Canyon at the northern edge of the San Fernando Valley, fled their homes about 5:15 a.m. as flames pushed by 70-m.p.h winds shot up the canyon and set back yard decks and fences blazing.

By day’s end Friday, the fire had partially encircled Porter Ranch, where $400,000 homes line winding streets and dozens of short cul-de-sacs designed for privacy in a hilly area between two canyons. The calamity had provided the sprawling neighborhood’s 3,000 families with an unexpected unity: terror.

Almost everybody who could fled, everybody except Norma and Merrill Bennett, that is.

“We couldn’t get out,” said Norma Bennett, 59. “The wind was blowing so hard that it knocked our garage door off its hinges and we couldn’t open it to get our cars out.

“So we stayed and tried to fight the fire. The juniper and pine trees across the street caught fire first and the flames just leaped across the street into our yard.

“I turned on the garden hose and tried to squirt the flames. Then I sprayed my hair so I wouldn’t catch on fire,” she said.

When neighbor Melba Smith’s shrubbery and front yard fence ignited, Bennett dragged her hose over and fought that fire, too. “I was sure glad to see the firemen,” Norma Bennett said.

As the flames hopscotched down Beaufait Avenue, they turned through Porter Ridge Park toward Kilfinan Street, which lies beneath a hill next to Aliso Canyon.

By daylight, many residents there decided to stay and fight for their homes.

Joyce Spotts, 56, stood in choking smoke and tossed bucket after bucket of water on wooden fences that separate her neighborhood from the hill. A family bucket brigade stretched into her back yard, where husband Johnnie Spotts, 61, was dipping water out of the swimming pool.

Spotts, who is Frank Sinatra’s personal jet pilot, said daughters Linda, 18, and Karen, 25 joined the line. Their boyfriends, Garrett Dow, 18, and Paul Rodriquez, 28, hurried to help when they saw the smoke.

A few doors away, neighbor Gordon Wolfe was pouring water on his roof--although his car was parked out front and loaded with belongings just in case.

“We’ve got four years of income tax (forms) in there, which is probably idiotic,” said wife Carol Sue Wolfe, managing a smile as flames shot along the hillside.

As the fire passed his home of 20 years about 8:30 a.m., Burt Krell and his wife, Susan, threw down their garden hoses and ran inside the house. They emerged carrying cups of coffee for firefighters who had taken up positions in back yards and on rooftops a few minutes earlier.

“These guys did a fantastic job. I’ll vote for all the fire bond issues in the future, I’ll tell you,” Burt Krell said.

As the flames moved away from Porter Ranch, residents who had fled Beaufait Avenue were allowed to return to their homes. Authorities said the evacuation was voluntary.

“It was hitting so fast I thought my hair would catch fire, my clothing would catch fire,” said Jane Cody, 41, whose home escaped damage. “All you could see was red. All you could feel was wind.”

Ann Friedman, 46, said she had telephoned police when she smelled smoke about 5 a.m. but was told that homes were not threatened.

“Then came the worst hell winds and the loudspeakers telling us to evacuate,” she said. Friedman could not spare a second to turn on a fire safety device in her swimming pool that would have pumped water into a roof sprinkler system. Her home was destroyed.

Firefighters said their work was hampered at one point when an evacuating resident smashed into a fire hydrant. The resulting geyser at 12019 Beaufait Avenue caused water pressure to drop briefly.

City Fire Capt. Karl Grossman said the hydrant was lost at a critical moment, as firefighters were preparing their hoses and as the fiery embers were whipping through the air. The damage to the hydrant also significantly reduced water pressure in a second hydrant on the block, he said.

About 80 Arabian and thoroughbred horses boarded at Damoor Farms in Aliso Canyon were hauled away in trailers and taken to the football field at Granada Hills High School, where they were tethered to the bleacher railings.

Red Cross officials prepared to open three emergency shelters--Robert Frost Junior High in Granada Hills, Granada Hills High School and Temple Ahavat Shalom--but the two schools were closed when no one showed up. About 60 residents waited out the fire at the temple, which was nearest to the fire zone.

Scores of residents parked along main thoroughfares near the fire, or went to local coffee shops and supermarket parking lots to wait out the blaze.

By 11 a.m., all streets had been reopened to residents who could show identification, although some had to park their cars blocks away and walk in.

For many, the trip home ended in tears.

Terri Koenig wept when she walked around the corner and saw that her Beaufait Avenue home had been gutted.

“I don’t want to go in there, I don’t want to see it,” she said as she clutched her pet dog, Buffy, and sat sobbing on a curb.

Los Angeles Police Officer Dennis Huddleston, who had been gruffly ordering gawkers away from Koenig’s home, stopped his work and knelt down to comfort her.

Down the street, Marla Goodrum, 32, was hunting through the ashes of her nearly completely destroyed home for clothes for daughter Stephanie, 3 1/2, and son Gregory, 1. There were none.

Next-door neighbor Marlene Oliver, whose own home was virtually gutted, walked over and handed her a tiny red baby suit. It had soot on it but it was wearable.

“I’d been saving this for Christmas. But I’ll give it to you now,” Oliver said.

Gary Goodrum, 37, said he had only eight minutes to grab whatever he could before back yard flames forced him to flee with his family. He chose photographs, videotapes of his children and some jewelry.

“Our house had a tile roof and it still burned,” he said. “The neighbor’s have wood shake and it didn’t burn. Crazy, isn’t it?”

Next door, Brian Oliver said he did not expect to see his home standing when he returned after three hours. His home has a shake roof “and we talked about replacing it but just kept putting it off due to the expense,” he said.

For others living on Beaufait Avenue, having a tile roof was no guarantee of salvation, however.

Scott Vandenberg, 22, poked through the ruins of his parents’ $315,000 home looking for family pictures that might have survived. Over his head, a 2-month-old, $11,000 steel-tile roof remained in place above charred roofing beams.

“The wind was so bad that it pulled the nails out of some of the tiles and embers shot up underneath,” said Vandenberg, whose parents, Arnold and Eileen Vandenberg, had fled as the fire swept up from the canyon and into their back yard. “Once the fire got underneath, it started burning the house. The firemen said if we’d still had shake this whole place would have burned to the ground.

A few doors away, a chimney--and scattered piles of blackened clay roofing tiles--were nearly all that remained of fire-flattened homes at 12084 and 12076 Beaufait Avenue.

But destroyed homes at 12100 and 12105 Beaufait Avenue showed the charred remains of wood-shingle roofs. Next door to one of those homes, the wood-shingled residence of Bill Edwards had a gaping hole burned in its roof.

Neighbor Bill Stanley, 79, suggested that Edwards repair the damage with a non-combustible replacement.

“I replaced my old roof last spring,” said Stanley, who has lived on the street for 19 years. “If it hadn’t been for my metal roof, we’d be in the same shape.

Also contributing to this story were Times staff writers Stephanie Chavez, Gabe Fuentes and Michael Connelly.