Fires Destroy 14 Homes; More Heat Records Shattered : Weather: Little relief expected until next week. Residences burn in canyons in Glendale and near Yorba Linda. Downtown temperature reaches 109.

Searing heat broke longstanding records across Southern California and the rest of the Southwest for the second straight day Wednesday, hampering the efforts of firefighters battling blazes that destroyed at least 14 homes in canyons in Glendale and near Yorba Linda.

The thermometer reached 109 degrees at the Los Angeles Civic Center on Wednesday afternoon, breaking a 14-year-old record for the date by 7 degrees and falling just 3 degrees short of the all-time record for any date, set on Tuesday.

Forecasters said little relief is expected until early next week.

The parching heat and gusting winds generated my a massive inland high-pressure system put firefighters on special alert as at least half a dozen blazes began spreading across the Southland Wednesday afternoon.

The Glendale fire, which started on the west side of the Glendale Freeway shortly before 3 p.m., had jumped the freeway and destroyed at least 11 homes by late afternoon.

More than 400 firefighters from the Glendale, Burbank, Pasadena, Los Angeles and Los Angeles County fire departments were battling the blaze. Cause of the fire was under investigation.

The fire north of Yorba Linda was burning in Carbon Canyon. Authorities said a man was in custody for investigation of felony arson in connection with the fire.

Flames quickly leapfrogged through the rugged hill country and had destroyed at least three houses by nightfall. The blaze burned in parts of three counties--including Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino.

More than 250 firefighters were on the fire lines as flames continued to rage out of control after blackening more than 2,000 acres of grassland.

About 200 passengers were bumped from their flights at Burbank Airport when the heat--which approached 110 degrees on the runways--forced airlines to lighten the loads on their planes.

Federal Aviation Administration officials explained that in very hot weather, air thins and the lifting capacity of airliners’ wings is reduced. The same problem occurred Tuesday in Phoenix when the temperature there reached a record-shattering 122 degrees.

Power consumption, pushed to record high levels on Tuesday, broke those records again on Wednesday as millions of Southland residents tried to beat the heat by cranking up their air conditioners.

Hundreds of thousands more fled to the beaches, where temperatures were as much as 35 degrees cooler than inland.

But for many, there was no escape.

“It’s terrible!” said auto mechanic Elmo Stewart, 47, as he sweltered over a car at a small, air-conditionless repair shop in Canoga Park, where the inside temperature had topped 102 by mid-morning.

“It got bad pretty fast today,” Stewart said. “By 9:30 a.m., I was pretty well drained. I picked the wrong kind of job. Let me tell you!”

Six schools on year-around session in the Los Angeles Unified School District lack full air conditioning, and four of them closed early on Wednesday because of the heat. The other two plan to close early today.

At the Reseda Elementary School in the San Fernando Valley, administrators sent students home at 12:20 p.m. Wednesday when temperatures in some classroom topped 90 degrees.

“They’re so hot, poor things,” said Carol Marderosian, a fourth-grade teacher. “There’s lots of nosebleeds, their stomachs hurt, their faces are red.”

According to meteorologists, the far-reaching heat wave is the product of a massive high-pressure system dome that is stationed over the Southwest like a lid on a vast Dutch oven, baking the entire landscape beneath it. The lid presses down in a process called “subsidence,” compressing and heating the air beneath it.

The crippling heat wave has been blamed for at least one death here--that of a 4-year-old boy who succumbed to heat exhaustion Tuesday after being accidentally locked in a parked car in Pacoima. Three others apparently died from the 122-degree heat in Phoenix on Tuesday.

Tuesday’s downtown Los Angeles high--112 degrees--smashed a 107-year-old record for the date by 14 degrees and was the hottest temperature ever recorded at the downtown Civic Center since the National Weather Service started keeping records 113 years ago.

The 112-degree reading came at about 5 p.m., when the thermometer jumped 5 degrees in a few minutes as gusting winds pulled superheated air from aloft down to ground level, where the Weather Service’s instruments are located.

The thermometer hovered for most of the night Tuesday at a sweltering 92 degrees before finally dipping to 87 at about 7 a.m. Wednesday.

That would be the all-time record for the warmest minimum reading if the Civic Center thermometer did not drop below that by midnight Wednesday.

It did not take long for things to start heating up again Wednesday morning. By 8 a.m. it was 94 degrees at the Civic Center, by 9 a.m.--the peak of the morning rush hour--it was 100.

As they had the evening before, cars started overheating and motorists pulled to the shoulders of the area’s freeways during the morning commute.

The breakdowns increased in the afternoon as commuters battled even higher temperatures.

Motorists’ problems proved a boon to the car rental business.

“Cars die in heat, so people rent cars,” said Iris Fox, manager of an Enterprise Rent-A-Car office in Torrance. “Many people are renting the cars because of the air conditioning--either because they don’t have it, or because theirs doesn’t work that well.”

In one of their cruelest advisories ever, the California Highway Patrol suggested that motorists turn off their air conditioners, and even turn on their heaters, if their engines begin to overheat. Mechanics explained that air conditioners tend to make engines run extra hot, and that turning on the car’s heater draws heat from the engine.

The Southern California Rapid Transit District also reported a surge in problems. Overheated buses were coasting to a halt throughout the county, causing sweaty delays for passengers who, in some cases, were forced to wait by the curb while drivers tried running the heaters. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.

“Passengers are going to have to take it in stride,” said RTD spokesman Rick Jager.

The hot, dry weather prompted the Los Angeles Fire Department to declare an extreme fire hazard at 10 a.m. Wednesday, sending engines from some of its urban stations to stations in the brush-covered foothill districts, where the fire danger is the greatest.

The Los Angeles County Fire Department also deployed extra forces in high-hazard areas, sending “strike teams” of five engines each, drawn from urban stations, to Malibu and Newhall, areas especially prone to brush blazes.

The Glendale fire started in a patch of dry brush just south of Verdugo Road near Mountain Street. Flames roared up the hillside and began leaping from roof to roof in the affluent residential neighborhood of College Hills, Glendale fire officials said.

The fire leapfrogged the Glendale Freeway, and residents were being evacuated throughout the area, according to Capt. Steve Wood of the Fire Department.

In the 800 block of Foxkirk Drive, just east of the Glendale Freeway, residents ignored official orders to evacuate their homes and clung to the ridge, using garden hoses to spray water onto their roofs and the roiling flames.

“I’m just crossing my fingers,” said Peter Marx, a doctor who returned from work to find his three-story house imperiled.

Next door, two teen-age brothers cheered as a water-dropping helicopters scored a direct hit on flames.

“The fire marshal said ‘get out of here’ . . . but I wouldn’t do it,” said Clarence Bodmer, 18.

About 200 homes were threatened late Wednesday by the fire in Carbon Canyon near Yorba Linda.

Authorities arrested a 30-year-old transient Wednesday on suspicion of felony arson shortly after the fire was started about 11 a.m. His name was not released.

Four firefighters reported minor injuries while fighting the fire, three from smoke inhalation and one from minor burns.

The thermometer reached 91 degrees Wednesday afternoon at San Diego’s Lindbergh Field, breaking the previous high of 90 degrees for the date, set in 1976.

Power usage soared throughout the Southland.

The Southern California Edison Co. said its 4 million customers in the Los Angeles area had used 17,647 megawatts of power by 3 p.m. Wednesday, topping Tuesday’s all-time mark by almost 700 megawatts.

“On a normal June day, we’d probably be in the 12,000 range,” SCE spokesman Paul Klein said.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s 1.3 million customers set a new record Wednesday by using 5,312 megawatts of power, according to spokeswoman Mindy Berman. That topped the previous day’s all-time record demand of 5,137 megawatts.

Both utilities reported scattered power outages during the day. Edison said 80,000 customers lost service for varying amounts of time, but by 2 p.m. all but 400 customers had their service restored. Service to about 2,500 DWP customers was interrupted briefly in the Palms, Northridge and North Hollywood areas.

Times staff writers Stephen Braun, Paul Feldman and Scott Harris contributed to this story.

WINNERS AND LOSERS--It’s perfect weather for an icehouse owner. For those who work outside, it’s a test of endurance. B1

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