Fire in San Clemente Partially Guts 1 Home, Damages 2 Others

A fire of unknown origin swept through a San Clemente neighborhood Wednesday, partially gutting one house and damaging two others, authorities said.

No one was injured in the blaze, but the owner of the house in which the fire started said her life was saved by a smoke detector.

“I changed the battery in (the smoke detector) only two days ago,” said 47-year-old Jennifer Wagner, who has lived at 139 Escalones for the last three years. “The beeping woke me up, and then everything went up in flames.”

Wagner said the flames apparently started in a wooden addition to the house and shot three stories high.

Wagner’s son, Brett Wagner, 23, said he was washing some dishes in the house when the fire broke out at about 2:30 p.m.

“All I knew was the smoke alarm went off, and then the entire place was dust,” Brett Wagner said.

His mother ran outside, grabbed a garden hose and attempted to put out the blaze.

“It was a joke,” she said. “It was like spitting on a volcano.”

After she abandoned her effort to put out the fire, neighbors said, Wagner ran in the middle of the street, screaming for someone to call the Fire Department.

The fire quickly spread to two houses on Mariposa which back up to Wagner’s residence.

Jack Stubbs, a spokesman for the San Clemente Fire Department, said it took 25 firefighters about 15 minutes to control the blaze.

Fire officials said Wagner’s house was considerably damaged, while the two Mariposa residences suffered moderate fire and water damage. A damage estimate was not immediately available, and investigators are still trying to determine the cause of the blaze, Stubbs said.

The billowing smoke scared some San Clemente residents, some of whom grabbed garden hoses and climbed on their roofs to soak their wooden shingles.

Russ Ramsey, 56, said he closed his beauty salon and followed the fire engines when he saw the smoke coming from the direction of his home.

“I thought it was my house,” said Ramsey, who lives two blocks away from the fire. “I’m fortunate that it wasn’t mine, but I am sad for the owner.”