LOCAL : Arson Fire Destroys One Wing of Abandoned OC Bank Building

An early-morning fire that authorities say was intentionally set raced through one section of an abandoned Laguna Hills bank building today, causing more than $250,000 in damage.

“We are calling it arson,” Orange County Fire Department spokesman Capt. Dan Young said of the blaze that destroyed the east wing of the boarded-up Saddleback National Bank on Avenida de Carlota.

“Investigators came out (of the gutted portion of the bank and office complex) shaking their heads,” Young said.

Firefighters were alerted to the blaze at 3:13 a.m. when a gasoline station employee ran to the Laguna Hills fire station, located a few blocks from the fire scene, and began pounding frantically on the door, Young said.

By the time that firefighters arrived at the scene, Young said, the two-story building appeared fully engulfed in flames.

It took about 60 firefighters almost two hours to control the fire. Efforts to douse the blaze were hampered because the building, abandoned for several years, had been locked and most of the entrances were boarded up, Young said.