1st Blaze Had Firefighters at the Ready

By the time most Los Angeles city firefighters arrived on the scene Wednesday, the blaze at the Bed, Bath and Beyond store on Ventura Boulevard was already out, dowsed by the store’s automatic sprinklers.

The emergency over, “we were just getting ready to get back to the station,” Firefighter Dan Garrett said.

That’s when Assistant Fire Chief Richard Olsen, looking east, saw the smoke.

“I just got there when it was declared knocked down, and then I saw this one,” Olsen said as firefighters mopped up after blazes gutted two stores and damaged three others a few blocks away from the bath shop.

Olsen scrambled to his car and raced to the intersection of Ventura and Laurel Canyon boulevards, three blocks away. En route, his radio crackled with the first reports of 911 calls about the flames, which sent twin black plumes soaring from Pier 1 Imports and Strouds Linen Warehouse in the 12100 block of Ventura Boulevard.

In a way, it was all quite lucky. A crew of fully outfitted firefighters was just down the street, ready to go. Also, Olsen, a seasoned fire chief, was at the scene in moments and could quickly assess the extent of the blaze and the force needed to fight it.

He ordered in 50 firefighters--later augmenting them with 75 others. They brought the fires under control within 20 minutes. It took 50 minutes more to snuff out the flames.

As he put it, Olsen made a quick reconnaissance of the scene when he first arrived, driving through the parking lot behind the stores first, suspecting that fire broke out in back storage rooms. Flames leaped out the windows. Olsen circled the block and discovered the scene wasn’t much better on Ventura Boulevard, where “I could see fire blowing out the front.”

At first, it appeared to be a coincidence that fire crews were so close to the blazes, but arson investigators later said the three fires were intentionally set.

Fire officials said the unusually quick response helped keep the fires from spreading throughout the block of storefronts in Studio City. Although the fires at Pier 1 and Strouds caused $2.5 million damage, most of the rest of the block was untouched.

Despite the billowing black clouds that attracted crowds of onlookers and slowed traffic on nearby freeways, the fires were relatively easy to battle, Olsen said. Fire officials quickly set up a central command post between Laurel Canyon and Vantage Avenue and divided their forces into an east and west branch, directing both forces simultaneously from the center.

The fires presented at least one tense moment for firefighters.

Three firefighters had entered the front door of Pier 1 and were about 20 feet into the building when their colleagues saw the smoke turn an ominous greenish-gray through the display windows. When smoke in a confined space turns this color, engineer Dan Thompson said, it’s a sign of a potential “back draft”--firefighter jargon for a fireball that erupts when carbon monoxide explodes.

“It’s like a smoke explosion,” Thompson said.

Firefighters rushed into the building, yelling at the three men to get out, while others broke the display windows to release the carbon monoxide which had built up. The danger quickly passed, but if a back draft had occurred, “it would have blown across the street,” Thompson said.

After that, Garrett said, “it was pretty cut and dry.”