Fire Threatens Laguna Canyon as Hay Ignites

Flames burst out Thursday morning in smoldering hay bales stacked 15 feet deep over an area 100 feet square, creating a stubborn fire that promises to burn for two more days and threatens to ignite the dry hills of Laguna Canyon, authorities said.

Fighting the blaze in a tomato field at the mouth of Laguna Canyon was complicated by the lack of fire hydrants in the area, fire officials said. Water was being pumped to the fire from a hydrant more than a mile away.

Gusty winds with speeds up to 30 m.p.h. were expected to kick up today and Saturday, and fire officials fear that wind-borne embers may ignite a brush fire in the tinder-dry Laguna Greenbelt area.

“We’re going to be sitting on this thing,” Orange County Fire Capt. Dan Young said, adding that firefighters expect to spend at least two days stamping out embers and flames inside the dense bales of blackened hay. “It’s going to be a lot of nasty, stinky, dirty work for a while.”

The fire apparently started as a result of spontaneous combustion deep within the baled hay, which covered a 100-by-100-foot area to a depth of 15 feet. The thousands of bales, which were mixed with animal manure, apparently got wet, then dried and began heating during decomposition, according to fire officials.

The manure was probably the primary cause for the fire, since decomposing hay normally does not spontaneously combust, Young said.

Because the fire apparently started in the center of the hulking pile, firefighters were faced with the grueling process of bulldozing the stack, crushing the bales and pouring more than a million gallons of water on them.

“This isn’t something that you can just throw water on and leave,” Young said.

The hay belongs to Santa Ana-based Murai Farms, which leases the land from the Irvine Co. to grow tomatoes. The hay had been stacked at the location for as long as six months, and was used for mulch.

Murai Farms cultivates about 700 acres in Orange County. From January to June they grow strawberries, and from June to Christmas they grow 400 acres of tomatoes plus assorted other vegetables, such as zucchini squash.

The owner of the farm, George Murai, was not available for comment, a company spokeswoman said.

Murai Farms could be held liable for all firefighting costs if the company is found negligent in the way it stored the hay or reacted to the fire, Young said.

Among other things, investigators were looking into a report that a security guard patrolling the farm Wednesday night noticed smoke coming out of the pile, but failed to call the Fire Department, Young said.

In addition, the company stored a flammable pile of mulch within 20 feet of the towering stack. The mulch repeatedly caught fire as the bales burned, prompting one fire crew, armed with rakes and hoses, to race back and forth along the narrow pile.

By the time farmhands discovered the fire early Thursday morning, offshore winds had fanned the smoldering embers into flames. The fire quickly spread out of control along the top of the bales, Young said.

“I think they thought they were going to fight it themselves,” Young said.

By 7:30 a.m., the Irvine police called the County Fire Department, which sent 80 firefighters to the scene. Orange County and El Toro Marine Corps Air Station firefighters were met with flames that leaped from the stack and sent black smoke high into sky, causing slowdowns on the nearby San Diego Freeway, officials said.

To their dismay, the first firefighters discovered that there are no fire hydrants in the area, Young said. They eventually found a hydrant at Irvine Medical Center, more than a mile from the blaze.

Fire officials devised an unusual method for getting high-pressure water to the scene: Hoses were strung from fire engine to fire engine along Alton Parkway and Sand Canyon Road, creating a 5,500-foot-long line. “I don’t believe we’ve rigged something that complex in years,” Young said.

Because of forecasts for afternoon winds on Thursday, Battalion Chief Stan Matthews immediately sent crews into the brushy hills to watch for embers. Fortunately, winds blew embers into the green tomato fields, and not into the brown hills only a few dozen yards away.

“We’ll be doing this all night,” Matthews said.

At nightfall, fire crews continued to break up the bales of hay with bulldozers. Each bale weighs about 1 ton, fire officials said. The dark plume of smoke had dissipated to a white column of steam and smoke as firefighters continued to pour water on the collapsing pile.

Fire officials said that with strengthening winds, there was a chance the embers would reignite. Leaving the fire scene prematurely, Young said, could be devastating.

“This is just how Oakland started,” Young said, referring to the Oct. 20 Bay Area fire that devastated parts of Oakland and Berkeley.

Oakland fire officials faced harsh criticism for reportedly not making sure a small brush fire in the outskirts of the city was completely extinguished. A day later, the small fire reignited and became a conflagration that killed at least 25 people and destroyed more than 3,000 homes.

Young said that spontaneous combustion in agricultural areas is not uncommon. Three weeks ago, he said, firefighters spent an entire day battling a blaze that started in a wood chip pile stored in a farm area less than 2 miles from Thursday’s fire.

Like the hay in Thursday’s fire, the wood chips were to be used for mulch in the fields surrounding the Irvine Spectrum.

There are no laws against the storage of wood chips and hay in large quantities, although there is a law banning similar storage of alfalfa.

Times staff writer Anne Michaud contributed to this report.

Hay Blaze

Firefighters continued Thursday night to battle a fire that flared up in a stack of baled hay. The fire apparently started when the decomposing hay, used to make mulch for a tomato field, heated up and ignited. The blaze, fanned by erratic winds, threatened picturesque Laguna Canyon.

Spontaneous combustion occurs when heat generated by the decomposition of a substance in a poorly ventilated area is unable to escape into the atmosphere. Here’s how the Irvine hay fire started: * Bales of agricultural hay (dried straw combined with wood chips) are stacked closely together, providing inadequate ventilation. * The damp hay begins to break down chemically, causing molecular changes that create heat. * The decomposed matter slowly combines with oxygen in a chemical reaction called oxidation. Oxidation intensifies the heating process. * Poor air circulation holds the heat within the bales of hay, which in turn causes the temperature within the baled hay to rise. * As the temperature rises, the rate of oxidation increases, creating more heat. * When the temperature within the bales reaches 470 to 600 degrees, the hay ignites. Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Orange County Fire Department

Researched by April Jackson