Residents Roused as Fire Razes Oceanside Store : Arson: Passerby helps alert apartment residents above the store and lead them to safety.

The 50-foot flames of a deliberately set fire destroyed a furniture store in Oceanside early Wednesday--but only after nine people who lived in upstairs apartments were roused by two men and shepherded from the flames.

The blaze, fueled by the new and used furniture inside, was “the largest structure fire I’ve seen in my 14 years as a firefighter,” fire investigator Greg van Voorhees said.

Oceanside fire officials said the blaze was intentionally set just after 4 a.m. The fire gutted Bargain Furniture, 322 S. Hill St., and a neighboring home, and destroyed four cars at an adjoining used car lot.

It took 40 firefighters 2 1/2 hours to get the fire under control, Oceanside Fire Chief Jim Rankin said.

The fire, which was visible to firemen as they left their stations 13 blocks and even farther away, caused an estimated $335,000 in damage but caused one injury.

Scott Arthur, the store owner’s son who lives in one of four apartments above the furniture store, received second-degree burns on his head, arms and back when he unsuccessfully tried to put out the flames with a fire extinguisher, Rankin said. He was initially treated for the burns at the scene and released, but later was hospitalized, said his sister, Elizabeth Arthur.

Arthur and a passerby, Darren Elzy, were credited by the Fire Department with going from door to door to awaken the occupants of four other apartments before firefighters arrived.

Elzy, 25, said he saw the flames and smoke as he was walking home from his girlfriend’s home. “I thought I was in Texas. It looked like an oil refinery fire,” he said.

Elzy said he first considered ignoring the fire and continuing home, but he had second thoughts when he realized that no one else was around, and that the fire seemed to be going unnoticed. “It was like, ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’ ”

Elzy said he waved down a passing cabdriver to report the blaze to his dispatcher, then went upstairs to help evacuate residents.

“I went up the stairs, and I saw this guy (Arthur) knocking on doors, and I said, ‘Hey man, need any help?’ I started knocking on doors,” he said.

“I wasn’t trying to be no Lee Majors,” Elzy said, referring to the actor who played the heroic “Six-Million-Dollar Man,” “but I thought, if I could save somebody’s life, maybe someone can save my life someday.”

Elzy said he and Arthur had gotten three children and five adults out of the apartments when a woman cried out that her husband was still upstairs.

“We shoved the door open,” Elzy said. “He was still asleep, on the floor. We pulled on his legs and woke him up and got him out. As we were walking down the steps, the smoke alarm finally went off.”

Later in the morning, Elzy, who works for the Brother Benno soup kitchen in Oceanside in exchange for housing, mused over the scene.

“It was the first time I ever experienced something like that,” he said of the fire and the rescue of the upstairs occupants. “It’s something you just see happening on some TV show.”

Rankin said the 63-year-old building was so damaged that it will have to be razed.

He said the fire apparently started in a car parked behind the building, and quickly spread to both the furniture store and a house just a few feet away.

When the first firefighters--in three fire engines and a ladder truck--got to the fire and saw its size, they requested backup from Carlsbad, Vista, San Marcos, Fallbrook and Camp Pendleton. Through a mutual aid agreement, each sent a fire truck.

At that point, Rankin said, the fire was too hot for them to try to enter the building, so firefighters simply poured water on it from the outside and concentrated on saving other buildings on the block.

The store was owned by Tim Arthur of Oceanside.

The American Red Cross provided housing for the displaced residents, Rankin said.