Grass Fire Near Petroleum Pipelines Extinguished Fast

A grass fire that worried authorities because of its proximity to oil and natural gas pipelines was quickly doused Saturday after burning about 20 acres on the southern bluffs of the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve.

Firefighters and neighbors said they suspect that the fire was started by three teen-agers setting off illegal bottle rockets.

“There’s not any source other than a human source” for causing the fire, Fire Department Battalion Chief Tom Huntley said.

As Huntley spoke, five engine companies continued to douse hot spots and soak the ground under the cluster of 10 pipes that flow along the bluffs and serve the adjacent oil and gas fields of Shell Western E & P Inc.

“What we’re trying to do is stop the fire before it gets up under these pipelines,” Huntley said.

A city police helicopter was first at the scene. From his aerial perch, its pilot could tell firefighters where the blaze started, its proximity to the pipelines, the direction it was headed and the best access.

Nearby, resident Darel Porter said he was watching from his second-story window about 11:45 a.m. when the teen-agers began lighting fireworks on Palm Avenue, which divides the undeveloped bluffs from the Seacliff on the Greens townhouse complex.

“I am on the phone talking to my sister, and I say, ‘These crazy kids are shooting bottle rockets into a dry old field,’ ” Porter said. “They lit one and it didn’t go. The next one, the minute it hit the ground, boom! It went up” in flames.

Next door to Porter, Lucinda De Lorm said she heard the “whoosh” of the bottle rocket, then saw two boys, about 15 years old, run away while a third youth tried in vain to stomp out the spreading blaze in the tinder-dry weeds.

“I don’t think it was malicious, that they went out and tried to start a fire,” said De Lorm, who said she immediately called 911. “I think they just had some bottle rockets.”

Winds pushed thick smoke from the blaze west and north, blanketing inland neighborhoods of Huntington Beach and Westminster.

Chief Huntley said the wetlands and surrounding oil fields are the farthest area from city fire stations. Much of the area is envisioned as a linear greenbelt that someday is to extend from Huntington Central Park to Pacific Coast Highway.

The danger posed by the pipelines is noted by yellow signs saying, “Contents are flammable and may under certain circumstances contain hydrogen sulfide.”

Huntley said he is not aware of damage to the pipelines; a Shell Western security guard said company officials would not be available for comment until Monday.

The blaze was controlled within 45 minutes.

“That field scares me,” Porter said.