Landslide Ruptures Gas Main, Sparking Fire in Angeles Forest : Storms: Flames shoot 75 feet into the air after a weld joint breaks. Rain had eroded ground surrounding the pipe. The power lines are damaged by the blaze, but there is no outage.

A landslide triggered by recent stormy weather ruptured an underground natural gas main in a hillside in Angeles National Forest on Wednesday, igniting a fire that shot flames up to 75 feet in the air, Los Angeles County firefighters said.

No injuries were reported, and no structures were threatened.

A pilot flying in the area spotted the blaze at 8:09 a.m. near Templin Highway, about a mile east of the Golden State Freeway, said Devin Trone, a county fire inspector.

“Residents who called initially said they heard a loud rumble and a loud roar,” said Fire Capt. Derek Reyna, who watched the blaze from a helicopter. “When we got to a high vantage point, we could see the large orange ball of flames.”

About 60 county firefighters, U.S. Forest Service workers and gas company and power officials fought the blaze, which covered about an acre, said Brian Jordan, a county fire inspector.

The fire damaged nearby power lines, but electricity was quickly rerouted to other circuits, causing no loss of service to customers, said Steve Hansen, spokesman for Southern California Edison.

The 26-inch pipeline carries an estimated 30 million cubic feet of natural gas each day, pressurized at 225 pounds per square inch, from the San Joaquin Valley to the Los Angeles Basin, said Richard Moeder, pipeline superintendent for the North Region of the Southern California Gas Co.

The pipe broke at a weld joint when the earth surrounding it dropped away because of recent rains, Moeder said. The fire died about three hours later, when gas company officials were flown in by helicopter and shut off service valves on both sides of the break, depriving the blaze of fuel.

Moeder said the gas flow will be rerouted to other service mains until about 200 feet of damaged pipeline is replaced, which is expected to take two weeks if there are no more heavy storms. No damage estimate was available.

Moeder said the risk of the same type of fire occurring in a residential area was “unlikely” given that pipelines in such areas are buried under streets.

As a precaution following Wednesday’s fire, a crew of 10 gas company workers will spend today examining about 100 miles of pipeline along the Old Ridge Route that may be threatened by possible landslides in the mountain area from Santa Clarita to the Grapevine, Moeder said.

Reyna said firefighters were hampered on their way to the blaze because many of the back roads leading to the scene had been washed out by mudslides. But he said the damp weather also helped contain the blaze to the immediate area and kept it from spreading to the hillside brush.

“In the late summer, there would have been a whole different set of problems,” Reyna said.