Amid Ruins of Fire, Residents Rebuild Lives : Disaster: A year after the worst building blaze in the 104-year history of the Los Angeles Fire Department, residents of Wilshire high-rises are still trying to cope with their losses.

Shocked awake by the boom of an explosion, the whoosh of giant flames and the rattle of airborne embers on her window, Dana Maltz realized that it was too light for half-past three in the morning at the dark end of December.

Peeking down through the blackout curtains, she saw that the wooden frame of the uncompleted Devonhill condos next door was consumed in flame, roaring up at her like the world’s biggest bonfire.

“You didn’t see flames like I thought flames would look like,” Maltz said. “It was just a solid yellow-orange.”

What she saw one year ago today from her bedroom window halfway up the Wilshire Terrace, a high-rise co-op on the eastern edge of Westwood, was the start of the worst building fire in the 104-year history of the Los Angeles Fire Department.

A watchman at the five-story construction site called in an alarm at 3:37, but a warm, 8- to 10-m.p.h. wind from the northeast was already fanning the original arson blaze and blowing it against the eastern wall of the Wilshire Terrace, a 14-story luxury building with 106 residents home at the time of the fire.

Caught underneath the large terraces that cover the side of the structure, the flames flashed into the core of the building through air-conditioning ducts and were belching from the windows of apartments on 12 of the 14 floors when firefighters arrived five minutes after the first alarm.

The wind hurled burning timbers to the roof of the Devonshire, an 18-unit apartment house on the east side of Devon Avenue, to a construction site on the south side of Wilshire Boulevard and to apartment houses on the next block.

“I remember saying that there had to be an airplane crash, because of the amount of fire all around,” said Fire Capt. Louis Chatin, commander of one of the first companies to arrive on the scene.

With the fickleness of airborne currents, the wind flung firebrands to the wood-shingle roofs of houses in a block-wide swath that stretched for a mile and a half.

“Fortunately, we were not at home. Had we been, the man across the street said we’d have never gotten out of there,” said Luana Lagerson, whose house on Holmby Drive was a total loss.

The neighbor, who was wetting down his own roof with a garden hose, watched a ball of fire come down from the sky and come to rest in a rain gutter on Lagerson’s house.

“The roof was so dry that the whole thing started on fire in 10 seconds, and then the gas line exploded,” Lagerson said.

The Lagersons, who had lived in the house for 40 years, managed to salvage a scorched family Bible but little else, said their son, Doug.

In all, there were 33 separate fires--28 buildings and five trees; so many that dispatchers found it hard to keep track of them all, said Deputy Fire Chief Donald F. Anthony, who was the commander at the scene.

In fact, he said, the department ended up assigning two-thirds of its resources to the high-rise, frustrating homeowners who reported their roofs on fire only to be told that there was no one available.

But the decision to concentrate on the high-rise still seems correct, Anthony said.

“Clearly, the potential for the highest life loss and greatest damage was the Wilshire Terrace,” he said.

Four hundred and six firefighters and 58 command and supporting officers were sent to the scene from stations as far away as San Pedro, along with 69 fire engines, six rescue ambulances and five helicopters.

The heat from the flames at the Devonshire was so intense that a firetruck had to be pulled back when its side panels started burning.

Inside the Wilshire Terrace, where security guards called apartments and knocked on doors to roust the largely elderly residents, “it was real dark, real hot, real smoky and real difficult to get to the fire,” Chatin said.

There were 87 units in the building, many of them enlarged by tearing down walls to combine two original apartments, and customized with extra-heavy doors that the firefighters found hard to chop through.

The air was so hot that their leather helmet shields melted, and “aluminum (which melts at 1,150 degrees) was pouring everywhere,” Chatin said.

Even the water from the fire hoses posed a danger, heated to near-boiling temperatures and flooding the corridors of the high-rise because the concrete floors and ceilings gave it nowhere to go.

Already loaded down with 32-pound breathing apparatuses, the firefighters lugged 600 five-pound air cylinders up the stairs, each good for 20 to 30 minutes inside the inferno.

Snaking their hoses up the stairwells, they made dogged progress, but dawn breezes kicked up the blaze again. The fire was finally declared out at 7:43 a.m. A third of the luxury units had been destroyed, another third suffered serious damage, and the rest had smoke damage.

“We had a bronze statue that was completely melted,” said Chuck Maltz, Dana’s husband and president of the building’s board of directors. He said his Army dog tags survived, however.

“When you consider that no one was injured on the night of fire, that, in itself, was a miracle, and it gives a recommendation to the great training the (building) staff had in getting people out,” Maltz said.

“We keep a list of people at the switchboard, and we know who’s in town and not,” he said. “Our security people were able to wake up people who didn’t hear their smoke alarms. They were truly heroes that night. And the Fire Department did things I didn’t believe human beings could do.”

Soon after, the Fire Department made a preliminary estimate that damage to all the buildings and homes in the area totaled $17 million.

But Bob Corbin, managing executive general adjuster for CNA Insurance Co., one of more than 15 carriers stuck with the bills, says that total claims were recently estimated at $400 million, much of it in furs, jewelry and fine art.

Some of the Wilshire Terrace’s more famous residents included actress Greer Garson, who was out of town at the time of the fire, and film director Billy Wilder, who had sold much of his famous collection of paintings and sculpture only weeks before. Others were not as fortunate.

Except for a case or two of smoke inhalation, no one was physically hurt. But the psychic wounds, and in some cases the financial burden on those who did not have enough fire insurance, have been overwhelming.

“The average loss was probably $1.5 million in coverage,” said Arnie Abramson, a public insurance adjuster whose firm represented 15 Wilshire Terrace residents. Some of them suffered losses in excess of $3 million, he said.

“My wife was very depressed for quite a while,” said Dr. Ralph Bookman, a Wilshire Terrace resident who fled in bathrobe, shorts and slippers. The couple lost a rare book collection worth several hundred thousand dollars, fur coats and virtually everything else in their apartment. “It really gets to you. When you lose your home, you don’t realize what it’s like until you lose it,” said Bookman, an allergist whose patients include former President Ronald Reagan.

By now, most people are over the shock, he said.

Since the fire, many Wilshire Terrace residents have been living in nearby apartments, with rent of as much as $10,000 a month covered by insurance.

“It’s a year now. If you can’t come out of it by now you should quit,” Bookman said.

“We all feel stronger for having each other,” Dana Maltz said. “I think if we were living in a house that burned, we’d feel more alone. But having so many people in the same boat, we kind of get encouragement from each other.”

One year later, residents and fire officials are still dealing with the causes and consequences of the conflagration that the Fire Department simply calls the Wilshire-Devon fire, Incident No. 150:

* After a year of cleanup, reconstruction and installation of an elaborate alarm and sprinkler system, 15 residents of the Wilshire Terrace have moved furniture into apartments on the western end of the building, which suffered only smoke damage. On Thursday, they received permission from the city to move back in. Apartments on the east end will not be ready until at least mid-1991.

* Fire Department investigators have determined that the original fire at the Devonhill was arson. “We’ve chased down every lead and haven’t been able to name a suspect,” Los Angeles Fire Marshal Davis R. Parsons said.

* The developers of Devonhill, having first planned to start over with their original design, have decided to use steel studs instead of wood beams this time. Still awaiting city permits to go ahead, they have missed the height of the real estate boom and are still paying interest on their financing. “We are really a big victim of the fire,” said J.P. Chavy, president of the Devonhill Associates development firm.

* The ruins of the Devonshire have been fenced off, but its open walls and gaping roof stand in mute testimony to the ferocity of the blaze. Elenore Heller, the owner, did not respond to a request to comment on her plans for the site, which suffered damages estimated at $3 million.

* The Lagersons of Holmby Drive are rebuilding, this time with a fire-resistant roof. “Be sure your insurance covers replacement cost,” Luana Lagerson advises other homeowners. Hers did.

The Fire Department, although proud of its work, has also learned a few lessons from the experience.

If there is a next time, says Deputy Fire Chief Anthony, companies from nearby cities like Beverly Hills, Culver City and West Hollywood will be thrown immediately into the fray, not sent off to fill in at far-away Los Angeles stations.

And new procedures have been set up to try to keep better track of far-flung flames, he said.