GARDEN GROVE : Little League Snack Stand Is Torched

Vandals set fire to a snack stand at a Little League field during a botched burglary early Monday, causing $25,000 in damage and leaving league officials wondering how to make up for the lost revenue.

Larry Silva, president of the Garden Grove Northeast Little League, said volunteers had the threat of vandalism in mind when they built the stand with a four-inch-thick concrete roof atop cinder block walls filled with cement, with its one door made of steel and with a heavy lock. A small window was installed so workers in the snack bar could peek out at games in progress.

That small window proved to be a major flaw. Vandals attacked it with propane torches about 2:30 a.m. Monday, setting fire to the interior of the building at the Little League complex on the grounds of the Earl Warren School near Pioneer Park on Chapman Avenue. The snack bar’s freshly stocked contents of hot dogs, hamburgers, potato chips, soft drinks and a dozen baseballs intended for Monday night’s games were lost.

Silva said two refrigerators, an ice machine, a lemonade dispenser, a hot dog machine, four crock pots for making nachos, three coffee pots, two microwave ovens and a public address system also were destroyed, electrical wiring melted and the telephone system was ruined. He estimated damage at $25,000, and said the league had no fire insurance for the stand.

The snack bar’s sales of about $10,000 a year pay for uniforms and equipment for the league’s 33 teams and 500 players, said Silva, 45, a Garden Grove resident and a computer engineer for a company in Irvine.

“These facilities are for the kids and no one else and people need to leave them alone,” Silva said. “This is sacred land. They have to stay away from the schools.”

Fire officials believe that vandals may have been trying to torch their way into the 10-by-20-foot building through the window to get at the merchandise inside. Silva speculated that torch flames set fire to a wooden candy case in the window before spreading to other contents. Intense heat probably drove off the intruders, he said.

A clock in the snack bar was stopped at about 2:30 a.m., indicating that the fire started about that time. It was still smoldering when Garden Grove firefighters arrived shortly after 7 a.m., when a child walking by saw smoke and alerted authorities.

Silva said gang members have splashed graffiti on Little League buildings and may be responsible for the fire and attempted break-in. One torch was found near the dugout at one of the four baseball fields, and another was left on top of a nearby shed, Silva said.

On Friday, vandals also used a torch in an unsuccessful attempt to burn their way into the nearby Earl Warren Elementary School.

Joanne Rovirosa, a member of the Northeast Little League auxiliary board, said Monday that she believed vandals set fire to the building “just to be mean. There was no purpose but just to watch the thing go up” in flames.

Little League volunteers gathered Monday to start cleaning up. Games went on Monday as scheduled, and a temporary refreshment stand was set up to serve soft drinks.

Bill Dumas, an arson investigator for the Garden Grove Fire Department, asked anyone with information on the fire to call him at (714) 741-5626.

“Little League basically exists on revenues from snack bar operations,” he said. “I’d like to put the perpetrators behind bars.”