Up in Flames (Not!) : Lancaster: Those with a burning desire to see an abandoned housing tract turn into a conflagration get only a few flashes in the pan.

People came by the hundreds, as if to the site of a plane crash or cruise missile attack, standing there in parkas and boots in the dark frozen streets and fields next to a half-built and abandoned housing tract on the outskirts of Lancaster.

They stared patiently at the “Lethal Weapon 3” film set, surrealistically bright under the distant massed light banks, waiting, waiting, waiting to see a movie company create a firestorm in a subdivision, a holocaust in their hometown. Instead, what they got was a long cold night, illuminated by an occasional distant flash in the pan.

Why are you waiting?

“To see them blow the houses up,” said Denise Culverson, a 20-year-old student at Antelope Valley College, as she stood on a wooden box for a better view.

Why are you waiting?

“I heard it on the TV,” said Mike Runnells, owner of a Lancaster baseball card shop. “They said, ‘Tonight Lancaster gets rid of an eyesore. Film at 11.’ ”

Why are you waiting?

For the same reason as everyone, said 20-year-old Glen Young, there with a group of four friends. “We’re waiting for the boom.”

In the meantime, 300 yards away, standing in the middle of the housing tract cul-de-sac where the film production company was preparing to shoot the final fiery climactic sequence, locations manager Paul Pav was valiantly trying to explain that the spectators were gravely misinformed if they expected Warner Bros. to blow up a housing tract.

“Nothing will burn!” he insisted. “The noise will be made in the editing room. This is not something which is going to destroy the street!”

Try and tell it to the news media. For them this event was an ideal story, a perfect metaphor for the greed-ridden ‘80s. The city of Lancaster is stuck with an eyesore of 54 semi-finished and dilapidated homes. They were abandoned by the builder when the lender, Hill Financial Savings Assn., was seized by the federal government as part of the savings and loan crisis.

Three years later, along comes Warner Bros. in sore need of a half-built housing project to destroy in “Lethal Weapon 3.” In a mutually advantageous solution, the federal government, which inherited the property from the defunct savings and loan, gets $25,000 from Warner Bros. The film company gets a housing project to burn. The ‘80s illusion of cheap, fast wealth literally goes up in flames.

And best of all, the visuals would look great on TV.

“I didn’t solicit the press,” said film publicity agent Anne Reilly, waving her arm in disavowal at the press tent full of reporters and a row of satellite dish-equipped TV trucks parked outside. “Everyone called me.” There were seven newspapers and six TV stations in all.

When the story broke in the desert, some residents feared a giant conflagration to rival the burning of Atlanta. “So many stories went out that we are blowing up a housing development in Lancaster,” Pav said. “People were scared. The news broke in the summer. It was 100 degrees, dry as a tinderbox.” Neighbors were frightened that the film company was going to destroy their houses.

Unfortunately, said Pav, the film company never had a chance to explain that it wasn’t about to burn down or blow up an entire housing project.

The crew was going to use a maximum of 10 houses. And it wasn’t even going to burn those. It was too dangerous. The flames would be provided by propane gas lines running throughout the houses. It was all special effects, movie-making, the illusion of mass destruction. In fact, the houses themselves would never burn. The film company drenched the wooden structure of each house with 150 pounds of fire retardant.

It’s great stuff, said Pav, on this cold Thursday evening in Lancaster. “We put a 2-by-4 in the flames for four minutes. All that happened was it got a little bit of powdery dust on the outside.”

Which is not to say the film company doesn’t intend to destroy the houses. “We’ll bulldoze them when we’re done,” Pav said.

When the special-effects crew had fired up the propane lines, which it did periodically throughout the night, towering clouds of smoke, spectacularly backlit by the set lights, made the whole street look like the aftermath of a missile attack. But 30 seconds later, someone called “cut.” The flames instantly blinked out. The smoke drifted away into the clear night air and the spectators, standing patiently beyond the wall, waited and waited some more.

Even for a community not used to having major film shoots in the middle of town, this ranked in pulse-racing potential with changing the oil in your car. Out on the street, Mike Runnells said the most exciting thing he’d seen so far was this new red car someone had parked at the curb. If you touch the tire, he said, the car alarm talks to you in Spanish.