IRVINE : Door ‘Phantom’ Still Sending Its Signal

Although fingers of blame are being pointed at the military, the Secret Service and even creatures from outer space, area residents on Tuesday were still trying to solve the mystery of the automatic garage doors.

More than 200 residents of Irvine and Tustin have reported that their garage doors have been running by themselves since Friday night.

“Sunday night, I watched a neighbor’s door go bonkers,” said Ken Maclin, who lives near the Marine helicopter station in Tustin. “I watched it go up 3 feet, then stop, then start to go down again. It happened every few minutes--and they weren’t even home.”

Theories on the cause of the mystery range from some new type of jamming device installed on Marine choppers at the Tustin base to electronic jamming conducted by the Secret Service in preparation for President Bush’s visit to Newport Beach on Thursday.

But so far, no one has owned up to creating new radio signals that mimic the “open sesame” command given off by remote-controlled automatic door openers.

Capt. Betsy Sweatt, spokeswoman for the Tustin and El Toro Marine Corps air stations, said she had not heard of anything occurring on the bases that would create new radio signals. But she added that she couldn’t rule out the military as the source.

The Secret Service said it is not to blame even though agents are preparing for President Bush’s visit to Newport Beach on Thursday.

“We’ve got our normal radio traffic, but that goes on all the time,” said a Los Angeles agent who asked not to be named. “The President or the vice president are not here, nor are their airplanes, so it can’t be them. I don’t know what is it. We’re innocent.”

While the mysterious signals, whatever their source, have proven annoying to Irvine residents, they have been a boon to automatic garage-door service companies, which reported dozens of pleas for help since Saturday.

At least 150 people from around Irvine have flooded the phones at Emard Garage Door Co. in Costa Mesa looking for a solution, office manager Sheri Betzing said Tuesday. “Yesterday, I did nothing but answer those calls.”

Brian Besser, president of Besser Bros. Garage Door Service in Laguna Hills, said blaming the military or the Secret Service is natural, since they’ve been the likely culprits in the past.

San Bernardino and Riverside County homeowners grumbled every time Ronald Reagan’s flying command post--nicknamed the “Doomsday Plane”--flew into March Air Force Base because it consistently interfered with garage doors.

The presidential problem didn’t start with the Doomsday Plane, however.

“When (former President) Nixon was in San Clemente, every time he flew into town, garage doors would go up and down,” Besser said.

Usually, the cause of the garage door problem is never found, he said. It simply disappears. The industry has dubbed the phenomenon “phantom operation.”

“Somebody’s out there doing it,” Besser said. “If it isn’t the military and it isn’t the Secret Service, maybe it’s aliens from space.”

The best advice for residents affected by the phenomenon is to wait it out, said Catherine Deaton, a spokeswoman for the Federal Communications Commission, which has received only one complaint about the problem.