VENTURA COUNTY FIRESTORM : ESCAPE : Preparing for the Worst, Hoping for the Best--and Getting the Horses Out

Faced with flames that whipped within feet of some Hidden Valley estates and snaked menacingly along a ridge above Ventu Park, residents defended their homes with garden hoses, led horses to safety and stood ready during a long Tuesday afternoon and evening to flee with their possessions.

Tense and worried, they prepared for the worst and hoped for the best.

As the fire crackled through dry chaparral along a nearby ridgeline, a dozen teen-agers from Thousand Oaks High School grabbed shovels and hoses, and tried to protect the Ventu Park home of a classmate.

“We want to do everything we can,” said Heather Wilson, 15. “We’re not going to let it burn down. It’s my friend’s house.”

Ventu Park resident Gary Haw, who saw the first bursts of flame while driving home from work in Los Angeles, hosed down his roof and vowed not to evacuate.

“I just moved here two months ago, and I don’t care if the fire is right at the back door,” he said.

The fire raced along the northern edge of exclusive Hidden Valley, where a stable owner rescued more than a dozen quarter horses from the ranches of her actor neighbors, Tom Selleck and Richard Widmark.

“The flames were right there in their pastures, in the paddocks right by the houses,” said Anke Magnussen, owner of Royal Oaks Stable. “The flames were real close.”

She said she first noticed the fire in the hills about a mile north of her property at 2 p.m.

“Because of the wind, it moved real fast,” she said. “Within 10 minutes, it came right down the hill. . . .”

Real estate broker Rick Principe, armed with a garden hose, kept watch as flames swept around his sprawling home on 20 acres overlooking Hidden Valley.

The fire, which sometimes shot 25 feet into the air, came within a foot of a barn near his house, but did not cause any damage.

“I didn’t want to see it all go up in flames,” Principe said. “You do the best you can to keep it all clear (of weeds) all the time.”

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The fast-moving fire was all too familiar to some residents who remember a 1976 Ventu Park blaze that was blown over the hills into Hidden Valley before being contained.

That fire burned right up to the property line of Nel and Vina Pitzler. After that, the family built a 100-foot fire break between the home and the canyon brush. Nel Pitzler also installed a sprinkler system on the roof of the house.

On Tuesday, that sprinkler system--fed by a windmill on the property--dribbled water down the roof as the Pitzlers crammed cars with cherished belongings and prepared to leave their home of 30 years.

The Pitzlers, who built their home in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains, had been ordered to evacuate about 4 p.m., and family members arrived to help them move some belongings and try to stop the flames.

They used garden hoses to wet down the house.

“I was trying to get them to take some clothes,” said Donna Pitzler, the couple’s daughter-in-law. “But they wouldn’t do it. They wanted to come back and fight this thing.”

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All afternoon throughout Ventu Park, people watched from their driveways and front lawns and pondered authorities’ requests that they evacuate.

Janice Johnston, who is six months pregnant, said she just spent $200,000 to remodel her two-story home but would leave it promptly if flames threatened her child and dog.

“There’s nothing in the house that’s worth my life,” she said. “I’ll just pack up and leave. All those people in Oakland stuck around and got killed. I don’t know what they were thinking.”

Johnston said she had a premonition Tuesday morning of impending trouble: “When I woke up, I thought this was earthquake weather. It turns out it was calamity weather.”

On nearby McKnight Road, Erica Ehlers said she began gathering her family’s valuables and her cat in the living room when she saw flames on top of the ridge above.

“If it comes over the ridge there, that’s it,” Ehlers said. “We took the cat in so we could grab him if we needed. We took the pictures and put them in a bag. They are ready to go.”

And after she’d finished packing, she ran outside and began cutting brush with an ax in an act of defiance in the face of the blaze.

“I didn’t know I could use the ax so well,” she said.

Karla Paulmann, 33, packed up her wedding dress and evacuated her Ventu Park home after seeing flames through her bedroom skylight about 3:30 p.m.

“It’s very scary, extremely scary--it’s the first home we have ever owned,” Paulmann said.

“You could see the flames shooting up the hill,” she said. “I didn’t know how far away it was, but it looked like it was right there.”

On Antelope Place along Deer Ridge in Newbury Park, apprehensive residents were not sure whether to stay or leave.

“It’s flaming up just over the hill,” Stephen Conner said. “One minute we are packing. The next minute we are looking out the window to see if it’s coming.”

But Liz Martens said she figured that the neighborhood was safe.

“There are five firemen on our block, and the Ventura County chief lives on our street,” Martens said. “We are pretty sure we have nothing to worry about.”

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As evening approached, Ventu Park Road homeowners were left to wonder what the night--and fickle winds--might bring. Firefighters lined some streets and helicopters flew above. The fire burned south and west of the neighborhood.

Jim McMahon, who lives on Mountain View Drive, planned to send his young daughters elsewhere. But he was staying put.

His main worry was the wind, although it had died down. He feared that a sea breeze could whip flames back over the hills.

An eerie silence had fallen on the neighborhood, except for the echoes of newscasts that chronicled the fire’s progress filtering out open windows.

Alvin Belscamper, 90, who lives near the intersection of Ventu Park and McKnight roads, said he wasn’t going anywhere.

“We’re going to stay right here,” said Belscamper, who has lived in his home for 25 years. “We won’t burn here--I hope.”

But by evening, the mood had changed to such a degree that Ventu Park chiropractor Terry Weyman called a pizza parlor for a pepperoni and sausage.

“I’m getting less nervous,” he said. “We’re trying to order pizza for our fire party.”