2 Santa Ana Buildings Burn : Transients Had Lived in Abandoned Storage Facilities, Residents Say

Plumes of smoke filled the early evening skies Friday as firefighters battled a two-alarm fire at two abandoned storage buildings that neighborhood residents said had been occupied by transients.

Santa Ana Fire Department spokesman Larry Garcia said no one was seriously injured, but several firefighters suffered heat exhaustion in the blaze in the 900 block of Poinsettia Street near the Santa Ana Regional Transportation Center.

Damage to the buildings and three vehicles parked nearby was estimated at $100,000, Garcia said. More than 30 firefighters battled the blaze, which started shortly after 5 p.m.

The fire highlighted the concerns in the neighborhood about the transients and drug dealers who frequent the area.

Residents of nearby apartment buildings and children who were playing in the street said that soon after spotting the smoke, a ball of flames quickly shot through the roof of one wooden structure and jumped to the adjacent building.

“It moved across rapidly, rapidly,” Averrsio Esperanza, 36, said as he watched the firefighters aim their hoses at the burning buildings.

“I came over here and I saw smoke,” 10-year-old Luis Rodriguez said. “I got scared and so I went running.”

Ashes and a few charred wooden beams were all that remained of the vacant warehouse where the fire started. The second, smaller structure also sustained extensive damage. An old truck parked on the property was destroyed.

Flames scorched a third building--a plumbing and industrial supply company--on the opposite side of the building where the fire started, but firefighters aimed hoses at the business and saved it.

Neighborhood children said they thought they saw some men running from the area as the fire spread, but Garcia said arson investigators had not yet determined the cause of the blaze.

“That big building (where the fire began) must have went in about 15 minutes,” said Scott Campbell, 30, a nearby resident. “It caught on and it just went. A bunch of transients used to live there. There’s mattresses and stuff in there, so I’m sure that helped fuel it.”

Frank Crawley, a 25-year employee at the plumbing supply company, expressed frustration that the transients and suspected drug dealers kept returning to the vacant buildings despite efforts by the city to drive them away.

A few months ago, he said, his boss took police officers to the abandoned buildings and found about 15 homeless people inside.

Just a week ago, Crawley said, the windows of the vacant structures were boarded up, and the city cleared the homeless out of a small strip of land that runs between the buildings and the railroad tracks.

“There was a bunch of clothes up and down” the strip of land, Crawley said. “You would not believe how there were clothes and beds and dressers.”

He said he always feared there would be a fire because there have been previous scares.

“They must have hooked up to one of those electric lines because they were cooking out on one of those wok things,” he said. “One day, somebody got mad at a bum and burned his mattress behind our place.”