Puente Hills Evacuees Return Home to Ashes

On Tuesday, the folks who had waited out the Battle of Turnbull Canyon crept back up the steep roads toward home--what they hoped was still home--to count their losses or their blessings.

Flame and smoke had made them refugees from their own houses on Monday. In the uncertainty of the night, they could only imagine what was happening up on that ridge, along that rustic Hacienda Heights canyon where they lived.

Fire Leapfrogs Home

Eucalyptus and pine trees that had once shaded Tammy Wigington’s back yard were leafless, charred trunks. Although some caprice of wind and fire had spared their house, sending flames leapfrogging over it, the Jacuzzi and the redwood deck where she and her husband had planned to laze away the Fourth of July were gone.

“We were going to have a barbecue,” she said mournfully. “But I guess we already had one.”

By Tuesday evening, the 1,500-acre fire was under control and only 100 firefighters were kept on hand, of the nearly 1,000 who had been on fire lines at the peak of the inferno in the Puente Hills. And fire officials had begun to assess the damage of the second major blaze of the Southland fire season.

According to revised Los Angeles County Fire Department figures released Tuesday, 13 houses were destroyed, another eight burned to varying degrees, with a “very conservative” damage estimate of $4.3 million among houses worth $300,000 to $800,000.

In addition, 10 outbuildings, chiefly barns and sheds, were destroyed, said Capt. Garry Oversby.

The cause of the fire, which began along Turnbull Canyon Road between the Whittier city limits and Skyline Drive, has not been determined. Investigators have concluded it was “man-made,” County Fire Inspector John Lenihan said. “The last time we had spontaneous combustion on brush was in the Old Testament,” he said. But he would not speculate on how it might have begun.

Fire officials expected to stay in the Puente Hills area through today cutting more fire lines and stomping out flare-ups.

Injuries were limited to a firefighter cut by a chain saw, and several others with first-degree burns from the heat of flames, Oversby said. Two hand-crew members from juvenile detention camps were stung by bees as they cleared brush; one was hospitalized with an allergic reaction. And all 15 of George Podunovich’s pet geese were found dead on a slope near his destroyed house.

Temperatures rose above 100 degrees and humidity dropped to as low as 15% Tuesday, but by late in the day, as the weather cooled and winds abated, firefighters warily scaled back their presence. “There are a few hot spots within the perimeter of the fire,” Oversby said, “but there’s no danger to any houses.”

Evacuees Return

At house after house, along the switchback roads, among the glens and hills and ravines, some of the 250 families evacuated on Monday returned Tuesday to find what had become of the places they had left.

Some came at first light, when fire officials permitted; others had already sneaked past sheriff’s deputies during the night. The stories they told Tuesday are the tales of loss and luck that rise inevitably from the ashes, becoming family and neighborhood legends.

As 50-foot towers of flame shot out of the canyon by his house, and the roof of his guest house caught fire, Michael Boenisch, 61, ran into the road and “stopped the first fire engine I saw. I said, “Stop! stop here! You have to stop here.”

He pitched in, water trickling from his garden hose, the heat so intense that the aluminum ladder he was standing on bent to 90 degrees. By saving the guest house, his main house was saved as well.

Diane Ponce had dug trenches alongside hand-crews, shoveling dirt on every small fire that popped up, and watching the ravine below her house burn. Tuesday morning, down off the hill and still in the same sooty, dirty white pants and T-shirt, she was summoned by a deputy who said, “You better get up. There are looters everywhere.”

Four people, including two members of a juvenile detention crew, were arrested on suspicion of looting in the fire area. The juveniles were arrested on suspicion of grand theft, said an Industry sheriff’s detective. The other two men--Martin J. Esparza, 28, and Mark D. Willet, 23, both of Valinda--face charges of attempted burglary. Six people, mostly rubber-necking citizens, deputies said, were cited for unauthorized entry into a restricted fire area.

One resident, Tim McGann, who had fought flames with a garden hose, said he was arrested for interfering with an officer and resisting arrest. He had driven a friend to the bottom of the hill Monday, and saw two neighbors being kept behind a fire line by CHP officers.

McGann said they all “begged” the officers to let the neighbors through to collect belongings from their fire-endangered homes. The officer “said ‘Get the hell out of here or you’re going to jail.’ I said ‘Take me to jail’--I can’t believe he’s for real.” So McGann, who had lent his chain saw to fire crews, was jailed overnight. “I realize maybe I (came on) strong, but hey, I was stressed out, burned out, scared.”

‘My Big Mistake’

Nancy Riley wasn’t there to see her home of more than 30 years burn to the ground. Poking through the charred debris of the home she had evacuated with only her pets, she said Tuesday, “We thought that we were safe. We’ve been through many fires. That was my big mistake. When the sheriff said to leave, we didn’t take anything.”

Riley, a sculptor, found that flames had engulfed two of her largest pieces, which were cast in cement. She paused, looking at one of them. “Now it looks like bronze,” she said. “It never looked better, actually.”

George Podunovich had just left home for a moment Monday, to call his niece. “At that stage, it was just a little fire back there,” he said pointing across the once-scenic canyon to blackened hills.

“But when I came back, the deputies wouldn’t let me through.”

His house burned; he dug a shovel into what remained on Tuesday. “My birth certificate, my diploma,” he said bitterly. “All my records--they’re gone.”

Don Younger’s house down the street was fine, but the electromechanical engineer’s stucco ham radio shed was destroyed, its 30-foot antenna listing, its cables sagging.

But “I lucked out, ya know.” he said. He pointed to a passing fire truck, and said: “The son-of-a-guns really saved me.”

Not everyone was home to fight the battle. Nancy Metz was paged in a Nevada casino; a neighbor on the phone told her, “Nancy, the hill’s on fire.” Back home at 3 a.m. Tuesday, she found only a seared deck and scorched curtains. “I expected no house at all,” she said. “My husband died 20 years ago, and all I could think was that the kids have no memories of him except on film. All that was sitting in a trunk in the house.”

Bob King was watching the 6 o’clock news at his parents’ home when he saw his neighborhood afire, “so I jumped on the first flight back home”--from Salt Lake City. He arrived at 4 a.m., just in time to save his guest house from fire creeping up from the ravine below.

Later Tuesday, as he drove up the hill toward his home, a jogger wearing earphones chugged downhill, oblivious to the scorched earth and charcoal trees. King laughed: “Only in California.”

Many of the 92 evacuated animals and birds, including ducks, geese and a pig who were put up at a Baldwin Park county animal shelter had been claimed Tuesday. Some, said animal control Sgt. Dennis Smith, “came from houses that were on fire and officers got them out.”

Two small grass fires erupted briefly alongside the Pasadena Freeway near Elysian Park at mid-afternoon Tuesday within three minutes of each other, and were put out quickly.

Vehicles Showered

But one fire helicopter trying to dump its load on a steep slope above the transition road from the southbound Golden State Freeway to the southbound Pasadena Freeway dropped water or fire retardant so close that the impact showered passing vehicles with water and sent small rocks and charred debris onto the road. Some vehicles had to veer onto the shoulder lane to avoid getting splattered.

As firefighters monitored the winds and heat, Southern Californians braved near 100-degree temperatures at Fourth of July parades and back-yard barbecues.

By 1 p.m., the mercury had soared to 99 degrees in Burbank, 98 in downtown Los Angeles and 91 in Santa Ana.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District said eight first-stage smog alerts were called in north and central sections of Orange County, the west, south and east San Gabriel Valley, the Corona-Norco area, Pomona-Walnut Valley, and Saddleback Valley.

Clear, sunny and hot weather was predicted for the Los Angeles Basin for today and Thursday, with more temperatures hovering around the 100-degree mark, which could set records for the dates.

Also contributing to this article were staff writers Myrna Oliver, Craig Quintana, James Gomez and Edmund Newton.