A SUMMER SIEGE : Carbon Canyon Hamlet Hit Hard by Firestorm

La Vida Hot Springs Cafe on Carbon Canyon Road is a local institution where millionaires rub elbows with bikers over barbecue and beer.

But on Wednesday, flames came within 100 feet of burning the storied establishment that was built on the site of a 19th-Century stagecoach stop. The fire late that night roared over a ridgeline and from around a bend and seemed intent on devouring the restaurant.

“Get out of there, Don!” one female bystander yelled at restaurant owner Don Himes after he ran in to retrieve some belongings.

The firestorm destroyed or damaged 14 homes and blackened 6,640 acres before being contained Thursday, but the restaurant was spared.

The scenes of fear and panic gave way Thursday to a weary cleanup and accounting of losses at the site of the Carbon Canyon fire. A 29-year-old transient has been arrested on suspicion of starting the fire, which caused widespread devastation in sensitive natural areas on the Orange-San Bernardino County line.

In addition, more than four miles of telephone cable were burned, knocking out service to about 900 Pacific Bell customers. Crews were working Thursday to restore telephone service in the stricken area. Southern California Edison also lost two power poles and a cellular phone tower, and Southern California Gas has abandoned service in the affected area until the fire is extinguished.

Eight firefighters suffered minor injuries. About 400 firefighters remained on the fire lines Thursday.

In Riverside County, meanwhile, a blaze started by the U.S. Forest Service to reduce fire hazards in the Cleveland National Forest got out of hand and charred 2,200 acres above Corona, destroying 12 structures, including some homes, and temporarily shutting down Interstate 15. Eleven firefighters suffered smoke inhalation and heat exhaustion.

That blaze, called the Bedford Canyon fire, was declared 40% contained late Thursday as it burned toward non-populated areas in the wilderness. Fire officials had no estimate on when that blaze would be brought under control. More than 500 firefighters were working in steep terrain with hand tools and bulldozers to build fire lines around the flames.

In the Chino Hills, residents evacuated from two communities were allowed to return to their homes Thursday afternoon, and the seven-mile Carbon Canyon Road was reopened to traffic. About a dozen residents of Olinda Village in Brea and 122 residents of Sleepy Hollow in San Bernardino County spent Wednesday night at Red Cross shelters.

Fire threatened but did not touch Olinda Village, a bucolic community of about 500 residents, although horses became so frightened by the swirling smoke that they broke a corral at the Hidden Valley Ranch on one end of town. Deer, rabbits and other wildlife could be seen racing in advance of the flames, some singed from the fire.

Many of the 200 residents of Sleepy Hollow, a hamlet hardest hit by the Carbon Canyon fire, returned to a scene of devastation. Once-lush hillsides were blackened with ash and the skeletal remnants of trees. At least 12 homes in the community and surrounding Chino Hills neighborhoods were destroyed by fire, and another two sustained damage.

“This is the worst one we’ve ever seen,” said longtime Sleepy Hollow resident Don Brinay, 63, a retired engineer who saved his stucco home by spraying it with a garden hose through the night.

One of the largest structures lost was an 8,000-square-foot home at the top of Hillside Drive.

Elsewhere, all that remained of one two-story house were four dozen cinder-block columns that made up its frame, a chimney, the charred remains of several cars and an indoor swimming pool, the water blackened by charred wood.

As residents surveyed their properties, they recounted a night of terror. Many had stayed behind in Sleepy Hollow to protect their homes, and most were caught by surprise when fire descended so rapidly on the community late Wednesday.

“It looked like a tidal wave of flame,” said Sleepy Hollow resident Robin Overholser, 36, whose home emerged unscathed.

Jim and Yvette Magliozzi, who stayed with their split-level ranch house, spent five hours watering down their home and the homes of their neighbors. At one point, a eucalyptus tree in their back yard burst into flames. The couple sent their two children to stay with relatives.

The couple stayed up most of the night because of the smell of charred wood and the fear that the fire would again come their way.

“The smoke was so bad you couldn’t sleep. It just looked like a city with all the embers going,” said Yvette Magliozzi, 31, who on Thursday was helping her husband care for pet dogs, cats and a goat that had been temporarily separated from their owners during the fire.

Linda Wolverton, 40, a 15-year resident, remained with her home for all but half an hour, when she went down to the road for some fresh air. Wolverton praised firefighters for saving not only her home but the entire community.

“I just gave him (a firefighter) a big old hug,” she said.

Himes, the owner of La Vida Hot Springs Cafe, was particularly appreciative of a five-engine strike team dispatched from the Los Angeles County Fire Department that saved his 64-year-old building.

“All I need is a couple of hoses and we can fight this s.o.b.,” an exasperated Himes had said earlier Wednesday evening as the glow of fire illuminated a nearby ridgeline.

The firefighters took up defensive positions on the roof of the cafe and along a creek bed. When fire ignited thick stands of bamboo congesting the creek bed, Himes thought it was all over for his business. But the firefighters trained their water hoses on the crackling flames and kept the fire back.

Janet Smith, a nearby canyon resident, looked on worriedly as the popular landmark faced doom.

“This is a happy place,” Smith said as oak trees popped and exploded under the intense heat. “This is where people from all walks of life come.”

In Sleepy Hollow, Brinay and his wife, Sue, who have lived in the area for 30 years, were more critical of the firefighters.

“The residents saved the houses,” said Sue Brinay, 65.

The couple were upset because, they said, no firefighters were around when flames reached their home.

“We are really upset,” Sue Brinay said. “There was not one (firefighter).”

Capt. Dan Young of the Orange County Fire Department, however, said units were there. Young said firefighters, faced with making split-second decisions, were more likely to try to save those houses where brush had been cleared away in compliance with the Fire Department’s request--the houses with “the most likelihood of being saved.”

“It’s a tactical decision,” he said.

So many homes were closely surrounded by trees and brush that fire officials marveled that more damage was not done.

“It was designed for disaster,” Capt. Bruce Brown of the California Department of Forestry said at a Chino Hills command post late Wednesday night as embers still flew through the sky, igniting new hot spots. “It could have been a bad, bad situation.”

But Casey Carter, 42, a Sleepy Hollow resident on Hillside Drive, said only so much brush can be cleared away and only so much fire danger can be mitigated.

“Where do you clear it? All the way to the cement in Newport Beach?” Carter, whose home was saved, asked as he watered down the parts of his lawn that were still smoking. “You can’t clear away 100-year oak trees.”

Close proximity to the wilderness was also the downfall of residents whose properties were lost in Riverside County’s Bedford Canyon fire, which at one point sent mile-high columns of smoke towering into the sky from the foothills above Corona.

“The fire came up like a blowtorch,” said Bob Moore Jr., whose parents’ home barely escaped serious damage in a canyon abutting the Cleveland National Forest. “The heat was tremendous.”

Fire officials estimated Thursday that 12 structures in the unincorporated El Cerritos community were destroyed by the Bedford Canyon fire. Kim Bolan, a California Department of Forestry spokesman monitoring the blaze, said the structures included homes, barns and horse corrals.

Though largely confined to chaparral-covered wilderness, the blaze raced late Wednesday toward Interstate 15, prompting the California Highway Patrol to shut down the freeway for an hour as flames crossed over in places.

“I almost rear-ended somebody because smoke from the fire was so bad,” said Katie Seilsopour, a Riverside resident who was driving home from work in Corona.

The Bedford Canyon fire began on June 19 when the U.S. Forest Service ignited the “prescribed burn” under then-ideal (cool and humid) weather conditions, said district forest ranger Suzanne L. Olson.

The fire jumped the control line Sunday afternoon, however, and by Wednesday had flared into a raging inferno under 105-degree temperatures and high winds, Olson said.

“We never expected it to get out of hand as it did,” she said.

Times staff writer Robert E. Pierre contributed to this report.

CARBON CANYON FIRE

The Carbon Canyon fire burned 6,640 acres, destroyed or damaged 14 homes and forced evacuation of hundreds of Chino Hills residents before being contained at 4 p.m. Thursday. Most of the destruction occurred in and around Sleepy Hollow, a hamlet of about 200 residents.