Firefighters and Homeowners Face Danger on All Sides : Responses: Early hope in the Hidden Valley battle turns to despair as winds buffet new fires in Simi Valley, Santa Paula and Ojai.

As Ventura County’s long day of fire and smoke began, 600 firefighters battling a single blaze north of Hidden Valley had reason to hope they would gain control in the hours to come.

But by 2:30 a.m., two more fires had erupted near Simi Valley and Santa Paula. A fourth started by midmorning near Ojai. And in the harrowing hours that followed, firestorms threatened the length of the county, charring more than 25,000 acres by nightfall and forcing evacuations of hundreds of residents.

Throughout the day, scenes from the fire lines chronicled the despair and hope of firefighters and residents alike as they coped with threats from all sides.

‘It’s Going All the Way’

The nature of the first fire, the Hidden Valley blaze, changed suddenly about 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, as fierce Santa Ana winds began to gust up to 50 m.p.h. and push it toward Point Mugu.

A 50-foot wall of flame marched southwest in the hills between Lynn and Potrero roads just east of Newbury Park, coming within about 25 feet of newer, tile-roofed homes.

At the same time, word spread throughout the command post that two more fires had erupted in Ventura County. The quiet confidence of the early evening turned grim.

“No one’s going home anytime soon,” county fire spokesman Alan Campbell said as Plan 4, a call for every county firefighter to report immediately, was ordered.

Assistant Chief Dave Festerling immediately, but grudgingly, dispatched strike teams from his fire to each of the new fires--one in the Box Canyon area south of Simi Valley, the other near Santa Paula.

Meanwhile, the Hidden Valley fire, suddenly fanned by sharp gusts, crossed Potrero Road.

“It’s going all the way to the ocean,” Campbell said.

What to Take Along

In nearby Newbury Park, Dean Lappinga and his wife had gone to sleep Tuesday night after news reports reassured them that the fire was still hovering miles to the east.

But at 2:45 a.m., sheriff’s deputies banged on the Lappingas’ front door, warning them to be ready to evacuate.

“I heard them pounding and I looked out the window,” the 31-year-old Lappinga said, “and all I could see was the mountain all red behind me.” His 4-year-old daughter, Tiffany, looked out the window and began to cry.

The Lappingas gathered their two children, pet rat and two dogs and got ready to flee.

“You get that fear that runs through you when you think, ‘My house is going to go. What am I going to take?,’ ” he said. They loaded sleeping bags and photo albums into the back of their pickup truck.

Although the Lappingas’ street was only one block north of burning hillsides, neighbors there felt safe enough to stand on their lawns all night watching the mountains burn.

“It was like a block party,” Lappinga said.

Naval Base on Alert

Just before dawn, the Hidden Valley fire roared down a final hillside across Pacific Coast Highway from the Point Mugu Naval Air Weapons Station firing range--three-quarters of a mile from the base’s main structures.

The firing range was evacuated at 8:10 a.m. and all ammunition removed.

“We don’t anticipate evacuating the base, but we have everyone standing by,” said Cmdr. John Kelley, base executive officer. About 600 base residences were notified of the fire through a closed-circuit television channel.

“At about 6:30 we watched it just sweep down the mountain,” CHP Officer Mike Robbins said. “If you can imagine it, the entire hillside was solid burning flame. It was incredible.”

Renee Groux was one of four firefighters from Point Mugu who tried to protect the communications facilities on the hillside.

“It came at us and it was intense and it was hot,” she said. “At one point, we got real nervous, because it was bearing down on us. But we stood our ground.”

Scorched but Standing

Down Pacific Coast Highway toward Malibu, on a hilltop up Deer Creek Road, real estate broker Richard Jenson also counted himself among the stout-hearted and fortunate.

All but three of Jenson’s 96 acres burned. But the three acres left unscathed are around his house, which was scorched but still standing.

Awakened at 5:30 a.m. by smoke as fire swept up the hill toward his house, Jenson called fire officials early and was told no one could respond.

“We were 10 minutes away from leaving when we saw three or four yellow (fire) trucks pull up about 7:30. These guys saved the day,” Jenson said of the Ventura County Fire Department.

A resident of the ranch for 8 1/2 years, it was his second fire, but “this fire was much worse.”

Jenson videotaped the whole thing.

“It comes right at you. You panic. You don’t what to do. So you videotape it,” he said looking into the scorched canyon.

It reminded him, he said, of “a crater on the moon.”

‘Our Place for 80 Years’

Six hours had passed since a small fire first ignited at Steckel Park north of Santa Paula. Since then, the stiff morning winds had swept the blaze west onto Jack and Josie Willett’s 150-acre ranch off Wheeler Canyon Road.

“It’s been our place for 80 years,” Josie Willett said, watching the fire consume brush, oak, eucalyptus and pine trees on her place.

“My folks bought this in 1904,” said Jack Willett, 81. He said the ranch had survived previous fires in 1929 and 1985.

After each fire, Willett said, the family cleared more brush. Just this week, they cleared about a seven-acre radius around their house and barns, which were left untouched by Wednesday’s blaze.

Nor were any of the couple’s animals harmed. Once a neighbor called a warning at 6 a.m., the couple spotted the flames coming their way and quickly herded about 50 cows from nearby hills and took 30 horses to safe ground.

“The good Lord is with us,” Jack Willett said.

John Ajack, a general contractor from Ventura who boards two quarter horses at the Willett Ranch, was awed by the fire’s speed and power.

“It jumped a couple hundred yards in a couple minutes,” he said.

Encircled by Flames

High above the fire but not beyond its reach, actor Larry Hagman and his wife, Maj, cast a wary eye down from their Sulphur Mountain Road estate toward the approaching Santa Paula fire.

Their mountaintop mansion is at 2,500 feet, up a steep hillside from the burning canyons. Another fire had scorched the same property in 1978.

“It looks terrible,” Maj Hagman said of the fire about 10 a.m. “It’s over in the next big canyon due east. And it’s jumped one or two canyons. It’s probably a mile away.”

The Hagmans had dodged two fire-caused roadblocks in a three-hour trek from their Malibu Colony home to the Ventura County retreat early Wednesday.

Hagman and property caretakers were now stationed outside, armed with water hoses and tracking the fire’s movement from Wheeler Canyon and across the dry, rolling cattle ranches that separate Santa Paula from the Upper Ojai Valley.

“We’ve prepared for this,” Maj Hagman said. “We have two fire hydrants in the pool. We have a hydrant next to the helicopter pad. And we have three tanks (that hold) about 36,000 gallons.”

Pumps had been running since early morning, and the pool and the tanks were full.

“The fire seems to be going out toward the ocean,” Maj Hagman said, encouraged.

But then a disturbing twist. “The wind has changed?” she yelled, questioning the men outside. The strong Santa Anas from the east had suddenly decreased and an ocean breeze made the fire’s direction uncertain.

“I can’t tell if it’s coming up here,” she said.

Six hours later, at 4 p.m., the fire had climbed the entire hillside and the Hagman house was encircled by flames that were stopped only by the asphalt driveway.

“All around the house has burned. It’s still burning on the west, but it’s under control,” Maj Hagman said.

We’re fine,” she said. “The Fire Department has done a marvelous job. And they said we had cleared everything to perfection. So that’s why we’re safe.”

Evacuating the Birds

It was late morning in Box Canyon near Simi Valley, and the oak-studded ravine was thick with smoke and anxiety. Many residents had fled the eclectic, upscale neighborhood at 5:30 a.m., when a fire official with a bullhorn drove through calling for evacuation.

But even as noon approached and fire flared just over a ridge, 74-year-old June Matthews--known as the Bird Lady of Box Canyon--still refused to leave.

“I’m not leaving until I know all my friends are safe,” Matthews said, helping evacuate more than 300 parrots, cockatiels, doves, pigeons, ducks, chickens and other birds she keeps in aviaries at her home.

She’d been flooded out in February, 1992, but returned three months later after shoveling tons of mud away to reclaim her birds, which she had rescued from injury or abandonment.

Wednesday, Matthews packed up again.

Helped by friends and associates from the county animal agencies, they quickly placed the birds in cages and loaded them in pickups and horse trailers to be taken to the Moorpark College zoo and a Camarillo ranch for safekeeping.

As she spoke, sprinklers meant to save her birds from a sudden fire showered the Bird Lady with a fine mist. Ashes fell from the sky. Swirling winds gusted, then dwindled away.

“When that wind blows up, I really get scared,” she said. “It can throw sparks right on top of the trees and start something right here. But I’m never really worried when I’ve got animal regulation (workers) up here. They’re on the ball.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, ending a conversation. “The fire’s bad. I’ve got to go get my birds out of here.” But then she added:

“I know it will work out, dear, because God protects His creatures.”

Two-Minute Warning

By the time a fourth fire broke out in Matilija Canyon near Ojai about 10:30 a.m., county firefighters were stretched so thin their afternoon efforts were only a holding action. And their frustrations were exposed.

“We’re doing what we can,” said R. Ranger Dorn, a Ventura County fire captain protecting structures at the Wheeler Hot Springs spa. “We’re about out of equipment. We were down to two engines in the Ojai Valley when we spotted this one.”

His strategy, the fire captain said, was to stay where he was. He said he didn’t have much choice.

“With as few resources as we have here . . . ,” he said, “I don’t see how we could leave. We’re making due with what we have.”

Bruce Moore, a firefighter with the U.S. Forest Service, was helping in the defense of Wheeler Hot Springs as part of a Santa Barbara fire crew called the Los Padres Hot Shots.

Moore said his division was on its way to the Altadena fire disaster when the Matilija Canyon fire erupted. “It’s kind of chaos right now,” he said.

Wheeler Hot Springs’ owner Tom Marshall said the fire started right outside his property line.

“We just got a two-minute warning,” he said.

None of the eight buildings were damaged. “But I don’t want to take anything for granted,” he said. “We wouldn’t have been OK if it hadn’t been for (the Hot Shots.)”

Up Matilija Canyon, thick plumes of smoke billowed throughout the afternoon above the steep hillsides west of California 33.

The flames threatened several dozen houses and businesses along the highway in addition to 60 homes on a five-mile stretch of the narrow, winding Matilija Canyon Road.

The fire came as close as 200 feet to the Matilija Canyon homes before cresting the top of a ridge.

Nancy Goddard and her neighbor, Karen Hesli, were parked along Matilija Canyon Road, watching the flames dance along the ridge in the late afternoon.

“We just heard that it crested the hill, so we came to see what would happen,” Goddard said.

She and other neighbors compared the blaze to a massive fire eight years ago that devoured the canyon and charred 119,000 acres--far more than have been burned this time in all four Ventura County fires.

“It’s not quite as bad as 1985, yet,” Goddard said. “That one was an inferno.”