4 Boys Are Blamed in Brush Fire

Four small boys smoking cigarettes started a brush fire in Lancaster on Wednesday afternoon and 35 m.p.h. winds whipped it across 1,500 acres, consuming two houses and several barns and vehicles, fire officials said.

The fire burned for more than six hours before it was contained about 6 p.m.

The boys--one 10 years old, two 9 and one 8--were booked on arson charges. The juveniles, who were already wards of the court, were returned to Walden Environment in Lancaster, a home for troubled boys, Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies said.

The boys apparently started the fire accidentally while smoking and playing with matches in the yard of the home, sheriff’s and fire officials said.

“They were smoking and it got away from them,” Deputy Marty Shearer said. “The next thing they knew, it was flames.”

The fire, the largest this year in the Antelope Valley, broke out in the sparsely populated high desert area about 11:45 a.m. Fueled by dry brush and gusts of hot wind, it moved quickly, jumping roads and sending surprised residents fleeing from its path.

Two houses, seven cars, three barns, and several chicken coops, sheds and power poles were destroyed, said fire inspector Mark Savage. Sheriff’s deputies estimated damage at about $400,000.

“It started out as a real small fire,” said Malcolm Mallett, standing in front of the smoldering remains of the five-bedroom house he had rented for the past three years. “At first, it looked OK.”

But Mallett, 46, who had been videotaping the fire from his roof, was forced to flee when the wind blew it toward his house.

“Everything we owned is gone,” he said of the five-acre parcel, which included the house, a guest house, a chicken barn and two garages. He was able to rescue only one of his five dogs.

Four water-dropping helicopters, two bulldozers and 300 firefighters, including prison inmates and county firefighters from as far as Carson, fought the blaze, the latest in a series of arsons that have blackened thousands of acres in the Antelope Valley in recent months.

“It just took off,” said county Fire Department Battalion Chief Roy Creel. “Basically, we chased it. We couldn’t get out ahead of it. But considering what we had, we didn’t do bad.”

“It was the fastest-moving fire I’ve ever seen,” said Sheriff’s Capt. Tony Welch, commander of the Antelope Valley sheriff’s station. “Even when we thought it was stopped, it would start up again.”

The fire, which moved in a northeasterly direction, started at the Walden facility near 90th Street West and Avenue K, racing more than five miles to Avenue H and 50th Street West.

The fire moved so quickly that a 63-year-old resident was trapped in his home for about five minutes, but he escaped injury when the blaze swept past.

“I smelled smoke and I thought it was an electrical problem in the house,” said the 18-year resident of the 7600 block of West Avenue J, who declined to give his name. “But when I opened the back door, there was a wall of flame . . . the fire was only about a foot away. When I opened the front door, it was the same thing. I panicked. I didn’t see how I could get out.”

After five minutes of nervously waiting and dousing the interior of the house with water, the man was able to escape the two-bedroom home, carrying his pet cat.

“I guess the grass outside the house wasn’t long enough for it to ignite the house,” he said. “I’m glad I cut it back.”

The family of Raquel Neissgarber, who lived next door, was not as lucky.

“It’s history,” Neissgarber said of the house at 7554 Ave. J that she grew up in and had moved out of only three weeks ago. “Everything is gone. The garage is gone, the chicken coop is gone, the animals are gone.”

The house’s chimney and a back-yard clothesline filled with white garments were among the only signs that a home had stood in the lot now littered with charred rubble.

“Fifteen years of my life just went down the tubes,” said Neissgarber’s father, Bill Luke, a retired Edwards Air Force Base firefighter who still lived in the home, as he gazed on the scene with his wife.

Firefighters were hampered by both the wind and a lack of water in an area where fire hydrants are few.

“It was looking like we were going to catch it, but then we ran out of water and the wind picked up,” said Capt. Jim Nelson, one of the first firefighters on the scene.

Current regulations require home builders in outlying areas of Lancaster without county water supplies to install a water tank near their residences capable of being used for emergency firefighting, Nelson said. But, he added, many of the houses in the area were built before those requirements were enacted.