Broken Dream Put to Torch : $650,000 Home Destroyed in Mystic Hills Landslide Is Burned as Precaution

It started with a pop from an incendiary device strategically placed by the bomb squad of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. Within seconds, smoke began to billow from the large blue-gray house, one of three homes in Mystic Hills destroyed in January by a landslide.

“Operations to Mystic I.C.,” a firefighter said into his radio as he talked with his commander at a post across the canyon. “We have a successful light.”

And with that, what was once the $650,000 home of Tom and Gayla Hitzell went up in flames.

The controlled burn of the Hitzell property on Friday was the climax of a weeklong project by the city to clear the rain-ravaged hillside and stabilize the area to minimize the chance of another landslide.

As 31 city and county firefighters looked on, the fire spread through the two-story house where bomb squad members had sloshed gasoline and diesel fuel. Flames licked their way through the downstairs ceiling and lashed out from a half-collapsed garage from which two late model cars had been pulled the day before.

Gayla Hitzell watched from across the canyon as the home where she and her husband had spent 6 1/2 years with their two children burned to the ground. The day brought a sense of sadness and “closure,” she said.

“It really went fast,” Hitzell said. “What can you say when you see your children’s basketball hoop burn and the fire coming out of their bedroom window.”

A widening wall of dark smoke and errant cinders pushed through the morning haze, partially eclipsing uphill homes and worrying the neighbors who had perched themselves on their balconies to watch the fire raze the Hitzell home. There were about 80 spectators, some of them with video-recorders and cameras.

“We’re concerned in case we’re going to have to go home and evacuate,” Penny Barnhardt said. “They’re doing everything they can to make sure it’s contained. But we’re all going to watch it to make sure.”

Officials said the burn went as expected, with the house collapsing inward as firefighters dampened the surrounding brush with intermittent blasts of water. The only surprise occurred when a propane tank, probably from a gas barbecue, unexpectedly shot up from the blaze like a rocket.

On Jan. 18, the Hitzell home collapsed like an accordion when it was wrenched off its foundation by a landslide. The house immediately below it slipped from its foundation, while the home next door plunged down the hillside and burst into flames. All that remains of that structure is a pile of charred rubble and a collapsed garage.

Officials said the Hitzell property was selected for the controlled burn because it had the most precarious perch on the hillside.

“It was determined to be unsafe to have workers in there trying to dismantle it,” Fire Chief Joe McClure said. “They figured somebody probably would get hurt.”

The job of clearing the area began last week when demolition crews built a bridge to the site. On Thursday, workers retrieved valuables from the Hitzell home, including a piano and a big screen television, McClure said.

About 50 minutes after the fire started, the blaze subsided, and a wavy carpet of flames nibbled at the rubble that had once been a home. Directly behind the devastation were yellow and fuchsia flowers which stood out from the lush hillside.

Steven Marshall, whose home was next door to the fire, placed his open palm against the inside wall of his garage as the fire died down. The walls, which had heated up during the blaze, were beginning to cool.

“I feel a lot better now,” he said.

McClure said that a fire watch would continue through the night and that a contractor would begin to haul away the remaining rubble today. A security guard is scheduled to stay on duty for about a week in the neighborhood.

Near the Hitzell’s property, a sweaty firefighter, his face reddened by the heat, propped his boot on a sandbag and put his hands on his hips. “It was a good burn,” he said. “A real good burn.”