Elsinore Fire Burns 6 Homes; 300 Evacuated

A stubborn 7,000-acre brush fire, feeding on dense, dry vegetation, swept eastward out of Cleveland National Forest to the edge of Lake Elsinore on Wednesday night, destroying six homes and forcing the evacuation of several hundred residents.

Stoked by erratic winds, the blaze raced out of the sparsely populated high country where it began Tuesday and took aim at several residential pockets on the west side of Lake Elsinore in Riverside County shortly before dusk. Six homes, valued at more $200,000 each, were destroyed in the Decker Canyon-Lakeland Village areas, where Riverside County sheriff’s deputies had evacuated more than 300 residents earlier in the day, officials said.

Red Cross personnel in Lake Elsinore said the fire has claimed a total of 15 homes, but fire officials could not confirm that report late Wednesday.

“The Lake Elsinore area is one of the worst in the world to fight fires,” said Capt. Paul Smith of the California Division of Forestry. “It’s an area where the fire sweeps down like a freight train. . . . It happened again tonight.”

More than 1,400 firefighters and at least 135 engines along with bulldozers, air tankers and helicopters were battling the blaze on several fronts late Wednesday. At least 42 firefighters had been treated for blisters, bee stings and eye irritation from the thick smoke, which reduced visibility on the fire lines to several feet in places. Officials said two firefighters were hospitalized briefly, one for smoke inhalation, the other for a sprained back.

Although 35% of the blaze was reported contained by late Wednesday night, it was clear that firefighters were waging a losing struggle at several points on the fire’s eastern flank.

Much of the containment was on the Orange County side of the fire, which broke out Tuesday afternoon near the Upper San Juan campground and quickly spread along both sides of Ortega Highway. It branched out in several directions, but by midday Wednesday the fire seemed to slow as winds in the rugged backcountry along the Orange-Riverside county line diminished, fire official Bob Paul said.

But by late afternoon Wednesday, as temperatures topped 90 degrees, the swirling winds returned, pushing the flames due east toward Lake Elsinore.

“The smoke is so bad you feel like you could cut it with a knife,” said Pat Rambo, a Riverside County Sheriff’s Department employee stationed in Lake Elsinore. “We’re also getting ashes falling all over the place.”

Towering columns of charcoal-gray smoke above the Santa Ana Mountains were visible for miles across Orange County. And for a second day, the 34-mile-long Ortega Highway, which cuts through the mountains from south Orange County to Lake Elsinore and is a main commuter route for workers in both counties, was closed as firefighters used the two-lane road to shuttle crews and heavy equipment from a command post staging area at Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park. The California Highway Patrol late Wednesday announced that the highway will probably not reopen until Saturday at the earliest.

Firefighters, aided by aircraft dropping water and chemicals, did succeed in containing the blaze on its southern and western flanks in Orange County, but when the afternoon winds sent the blaze racing eastward, several hundred residents were ordered to leave their homes in Lakeland Village, a mile south of Lake Elsinore, and in Rancho Capistrano, 5 1/2 miles south of Ortega Highway and just north of Decker Canyon where the blaze had claimed the six homes, according to Carol Stein of the U.S. Forest Service.

Scores of firefighters from 50 engine companies attempted to build a firebreak between the blaze and Lakeland Village in hopes of thwarting its advance.

“It’s headed straight for Lakeland Village,” California Department of Forestry spokesman Bob Paul said Wednesday evening. “We’re pouring everything we have into protecting those homes.”

At Rancho Capistrano, 200 residents were evacuated at mid-afternoon to Lake Elsinore High School, where the American Red Cross established a relief center. By 6 p.m., dozens of people living in the Lakeland Village area also were directed there after the blaze moved within a mile of homes on the western shore of the lake.

Earlier in the day, the fire had revived near El Cariso Village, a community of more than 100 whose tiny commercial strip lines both sides of Ortega Highway near the road’s crest and the border of the two counties.

U.S. Forest Service engineer Jim Parkinson said the evacuations of a nudist camp, a youth correctional facility and campgrounds Tuesday night proved unnecessary.

A three-year drought that has left the brush at its thickest and driest in 30 years fueled the rapid spread of the blaze, which gobbled up 3,000 acres of chaparral in five hours Tuesday, U.S. Forest Service officials said.

Because of the parched wild land conditions, officials said they brought in a large number of firefighters--from as far away as Washington state--to attack the blaze from the air and ground.

“We’re ready for a battle,” Tom Horner, Forest Service spokesman, said Wednesday.

The cause of the fire, which erupted at 3:15 p.m. Tuesday, a quarter-mile from the border of Orange and Riverside counties, has not been determined. But officials said they suspected some individual was responsible, reasoning that that there were no burning cars, electrical wires or lightning flashes in the area.

“There was nothing out there but brush and a road,” said Parkinson, whose engine company was the first to arrive at the blaze.

Times staff writers Thomas Becher and Ted Johnson contributed to this report.