Stubborn Blaze Guts Suites Near Airport : Fire: Dozens of firefighters battle flames for about an hour. John Wayne aircraft flying through smoke aren’t impeded.

A stubborn, smoky fire gutted a cluster of suites in a business park Friday afternoon, threatening several other businesses before firefighters controlled the flames.

Firefighters, who were blocked by densely packed cardboard boxes and paper in a rear storage area, had trouble getting to the fire inside 18003 Sky Park Circle for the first several minutes, according to an Orange County Fire Department spokeswoman.

For about an hour the flames sent rolling clouds of black and brown smoke over the business park that borders the northern edge of John Wayne Airport. The business park is just north of the San Diego Freeway.

Private and commercial planes flew over the smoke as they came in for landings, but the air traffic was not affected by the fire, said airport spokeswoman Courtney C. Wiercioch.

More than 60 firefighters from Orange County and Santa Ana worked for an hour before they declared the blaze under control at 6:16 p.m., said spokeswoman Kathleen Cha of the Orange County Fire Department. There were no reported injuries.

Four suites in the two-story, 12-suite complex were gutted and the fire burned a wide swath in an attached storage area in the rear.

Fire investigators did not have a dollar estimate of the damage, Cha said.

Investigators speculate that the fire started on the first floor of the suites in Nutriwell, a vitamin distribution business, Cha said, but remain unsure as to the cause.

Smoke began pouring out of the first-floor suite and the center of the rear storage area about 5:10 p.m., according to witnesses.

Cha said fire officials called in extra firefighters because of concern that the fire would spread to other units. Indeed, just as firefighters doused one area of the building, pockets of flames continued to break out in other areas.

Cha said firefighters would remain at the site for several hours to guard against any flare-up.

As is usual for Friday, many of the roughly 50 employees in the complex had already left for the weekend when the fire broke out. Deanna Husband was among those still there when the fire broke out.

“I was talking on the phone and the line went dead,” said Husband, who was on the second floor at Intermark Group, a sales and marketing company. “I turned around and saw the smoke coming up through the window.”

After leaving the business with a co-worker, she dialed 911 on a cellular phone.

Standing next to co-worker Bent Simonsen on the street, Husband looked up at the blackened office space where she used to work. She said the fire probably destroyed her company’s database of customers, a new, expensive computer and several other important records.

“Now we are a no-paper, no-nothing company,” she said.

From a separate business office at the rear of the burned complex, Frank and Elsa Liang saw some of the first signs of the fire. Smoke billowed past one of the garage doors, Frank Liang recalled. Then a man opened one of the garage doors, letting out even more smoke, he recalled. “We were going to fight it with our hose” but it was already too large, Elsa Liang said.