Fire Sweeps Construction Site of Luxury Apartments : Accident: Blaze destroys 330 units. Firefighters were hampered by dry winds and lack of access to water.

A fire that surged through a vast, half-completed luxury apartment complex in Thousand Oaks gutted 330 apartments as firefighters, struggling with virtually empty fire hydrants, worked to bring it under control late Saturday, fire officials said.

The fire that razed 22 of the 36 buildings at The Knolls was started by a plumber’s soldering tool, Ventura County Fire Department officials said. The damage to the $40-million project was set at $7 million, according to Regis Homes Corp., partner and co-owner of the project.

A Ventura County fire captain was hospitalized for heat exhaustion and smoke inhalation, and a Los Angeles city firefighter was treated at the scene.

More than 200 firefighters, summoned from 30 companies across Ventura and Los Angeles counties, labored against dust-dry 25-m.p.h. winds that sent flames veering capriciously over the rooftops of the unfinished, 540-unit Mediterranean-style complex.

Their efforts were hampered as well by fire hydrants that were either unreachable--ringed with fire that leaped from street to street within the heart of the complex--or merely dribbling out water at low pressure, Ventura County fire spokesman John Wade said.

“The fire forced them back away from the others (hydrants),” said Wade, and when they were at last able to move back in, “some hydrants were dry.”

When the nearby hydrants failed, firefighters set up a modern-day bucket brigade, a “relay” of five or six firetrucks, linked up to pump water from hydrants in a housing complex more than a quarter-mile from the fire. Helicopters were called to ferry in water to supplement the supply.

Water mains within The Knolls were apparently either broken or shut off, Fire Engineer Karry Ellison said. Fire officials will investigate whether the mains were broken or had been shut off while plumbing work was being done, Wade said.

Three times Capt. Keith Mashburn’s crew set up and laid out lines, he said, and three times they packed it all up and moved because water pressure was so poor.

As fire raced through the open-beam unfinished construction, engines at one point had to roll back from the searing intensity. One engine was badly damaged, and on Mashburn’s own engine, the taillights were melted into red lumps by the heat.

Several hours after the 2:52 p.m. call, firefighters had gained the upper hand, in part thanks to a natural fire break--the wide main street leading into the complex, which was to have been ready for its first tenants by the end of the month.

The blaze that hurtled through the lavish complex, outfitted with tennis courts, spas and pools, began when a plumbing contractor doing silver soldering on the first floor of one apartment building inadvertently set the wire smoldering, Wade said. Unbeknown to him, it spread up through the wire to the second floor, where the blaze began in earnest.

“He was on the first floor,” said Wade. “He did not even realize that the fire had made a run to the second floor.” Once he did, the plumber told a security guard, who telephoned the Fire Department.

About a mile away, floating sparks from the main fire set off two small brush fires, but they were quickly put out by firefighters.

Ironically, the roof tiles that sometimes protect houses from leaping flames had not yet been installed on all roofs of the project, and stacks of tiles sat waiting on the burning roof of one building.

At one point officials thought they might have to evacuate a home for cerebral palsy patients about two miles north of the fire, but did not. Sheriff’s deputies did roll through a nearby neighborhood, knocking on doors or admonishing residents by bullhorn to be ready to clear out if necessary.

“I put all my photo albums in the car,” said Rosalie Mastrolonardo, whose neighbors also loaded up their cars and waited for the evacuation order that never came.

Dianna Riddle, a nursing student, said that after deputies came through three times, she filled the car with the family’s pet Yorkshire terrier, some photos and earthquake supply kits, and “hundreds of dollars” in new nursing-school books and uniforms. As she drove, many of her neighbors were placidly watching the smoke from the fire, their children skateboarding idly down the street. They were still there when she returned about 90 minutes later, the danger past.

Along the rims of nearby hillsides, dozens of people came out to stand and watch the spectacle of embers and smoke, to the annoyance of firefighters.

The development has been at the heart of four years of contention between the owner-developer, Lang Ranch, and a homeowners group that argued that Thousand Oaks violated its own growth-control ordinance in approving the plan that would ultimately build more than 2,200 residences, including The Knolls.

The group contended it would create traffic and air-quality problems.

Times staff writers Psyche Pascual and Kirsten Swartz contributed to this article.