Fire Damages Seal Beach Pier : Rescue: Dozens of people are temporarily trapped at far end. Lifeguard tower and midsection of the walkway are charred.

Flames burst from a lifeguard tower on the city pier Friday, stranding 40 to 50 people at the far end of the wooden-plank structure but causing no injuries.

The flames, fanned by winds, sent up a plume of black smoke and raged out of control for about 20 minutes after the fire began at 4:30 p.m. Several dozen people were evacuated from the end of the pier, which has a restaurant and a bait shop.

While firefighters on the pier battled the flames, other firefighters shot water at its underside from water cannons as their boat rode up and down choppy waves.

Once the fire was extinguished, firefighters spent several hours hosing down a large middle section of the pier, trying to prevent embers from igniting within the planks, said Greg Petersen, an Orange County Fire Department battalion chief.

The planks are coated with creosote, a transparent, oily preservative. Firefighters cut through some of the planks to ensure that water would get past the creosote.

Creosote “is a great preservative, but boy, when it gets going, it will add to the spread of the fire,” said Orange County Fire Department Capt. Dan Young.

Authorities closed the pier and an adjacent stretch of beach for about 100 yards in both directions.

It was unclear late Friday how long the pier would remain closed, but Petersen predicted that it would probably not reopen until at least Monday.

Fire officials estimated at least $500,000 in damage, including the unoccupied tower which contains electronic equipment. He also included damage to a 30-foot section of pier.

“She’s a tough lady, as they say, but she is going to need some repairs,” Young said.

Investigators ruled out arson and suspect that the fire may have been sparked by electrical wires in the lifeguard tower, said Young. Investigators and structural engineers will be on the pier today to determine the severity of the damage, which comes nine years after winter storms ripped out chunks of the popular pier in a furious January storm.

Young said three firefighters would stay at the pier through the night to guard against possible flare-ups.

Ken DuMong, the owner of the Seal Beach Port Fishing and Bait Shop at the end of the pier, said, “Black smoke was billowing out. It was unbelievable. I looked out and the entire tower was in flames. That was really something to see.”

DuMong said he and about 40 employees, fishermen and customers of the restaurant were stranded at the end of the pier for about 20 minutes as the fire raged.

Witnesses said the fire appeared to start at the base of the tower and spread upward, engulfing the 20-foot-high structure and spreading across the underside of the pier, knocking out power to the pier’s shops and weakening the structure.

“When they finally got the wall of flames knocked down, they started evacuating people,” DuMong said. “When they walked us out, the pier looked pretty weak.”

Kevin Gregory of San Pedro said: “We were fishing for shark and then all of a sudden someone yelled ‘Hey the pier’s on fire!’ ”

“We couldn’t walk through (the flames and smoke), so we decided to keep fishing,” laughed the 38-year-old mailman.

Gregory said he was not afraid of being trapped because “as long as there is water, I’m OK.”

The group stranded at the end of the pier “did not panic or anything,” said Seal Beach Police Capt. Gary Maiten.

“We just had people on that side of the fire stay there until the firefighters had the fire knocked down.”

A boat that ferries workers to the oil rigs off Long Beach was near the end of the pier when the fire erupted, witnesses said. It was able to splash water on the flames, but unable to control it.

Residents had raised thousands of dollars to restore the 1,800-foot pier after the 1983 storm, which also damaged piers in Huntington Beach and San Clemente.

Friday’s damage was small in comparison, said Joyce Risner, a former Seal Beach mayor and councilwoman. Current Mayor Frank Laszlo, shivering along the pier as firefighters sprayed the planks, said he hoped the reconstruction would proceed quickly.

“The pier is important to the downtown area of the city,” he said. “It’s of economic importance . . . so (rebuilding) is a major concern.”