Firefighters Frustrated by Laguna’s Rugged Terrain : Blaze: Area’s natural beauty contributed to its demise, as steep sloping hillsides and rocky ridgelines make it difficult for equipment to easily access flames.

Like the floods that poured over fortified dams on the Mississippi this summer, nature demanded respect again Wednesday as wind-whipped flames roared through Laguna Canyon, making human efforts seem minuscule.

Ironically, the area’s natural beauty contributed to its demise.

Frustrated firefighters who watched the blaze tear into a quiet suburban neighborhood said the steep, sloping hillsides and rocky ridgelines made it difficult for fire equipment to easily access the blaze. And the untouched flora, much of it in preserves where it was left to grow and to die naturally, left an explosive fuel for the racing flames.

“We were overwhelmed by the weather and the fury of the fire,” said Emmy Day, spokeswoman for the Orange County Fire Department. “The wind contributed to it, averaging 45 miles per hour all day and going up to 80 miles per hour in the canyon.

“You can plot all of these things, but when it really comes, you do the best you can with what you have,” she said. “That is what is happening today.”

The million-dollar homes themselves created plenty of other obstacles for firefighters.

Jack Grogger, 23, a volunteer firefighter, said it was difficult to work in many of the Emerald Bay homes because they were custom-built. Sunken rooms and lots of twists and turns in the halls made it hard to maneuver hoses inside, and heavy beams in the ceilings that were hard to extinguish when they caught fire, he said.

With fires raging throughout Southern California, officials also said their crews in Laguna Canyon were hampered by shortages of everything. Not enough trucks. Not enough manpower. And not enough time.

The fire protection system in Laguna Beach and throughout the area is based on a mutual aid agreement among various agencies. It means that the agencies are equipped to handle most fires they will face, but for anything exceptional, they are forced to rely on help from surrounding areas.

Wednesday, however, mutual aid was in short supply. More than 500 firefighters worked on the Laguna blaze. They were equipped with about 125 fire engines, three bulldozers, at least one airplane and one helicopter. It was a lot, but fire officials said more was needed.

Thomas Dailey, a captain with an Orange County Fire Department volunteer unit from Villa Park, said fire officials identified the Laguna Beach blaze as a major one very early in the day.

He said that he heard assistant county fire chief Chip Prather on the radio about noon, when the Laguna Canyon fire had only consumed about 25 acres, “and he was ordering up 18 strike teams” of five engines each--or 90 pieces of equipment. And Prather specified engines that are used for structural fires, not brush fires, Dailey said.

“I’ve never heard of a call-up that big when a fire was that young,” Dailey said. “But Prather knew what he had on his hands.”

The call for more manpower and equipment was sent statewide early Wednesday. Fire officials said additional crews continued to arrive into the night.

Sometimes, the fire crews that did race to the scenes also found themselves tangled in traffic jams that delayed their response. Cars fleeing the fire area, sometimes driving erratically and the wrong way down streets tied up many of the narrow and winding hillside roads.

“One problem we’ve had is that you’ve got streets that are one-way up and one-way down and people in their frenzy to leave have been blocking units from coming into the area,” said Maria Sabol, spokeswoman for the county Fire Department.

Once on top of the hills, fire officials said the crews often found weak water pressure on the higher slopes.

Standing across from a burning home in Emerald Bay, Dailey said he couldn’t do anything until his crew got back from their fourth trip to fill their pumper truck at a hydrant down the hill. There was not enough pressure in hydrants at the top of the hillside community to fill the trucks, he said.

The construction of the housing in Laguna Canyon was also a major contributor to the rapid pace of the fire, officials said. The space between many homes is little more than the width of a car. And often, the architecture of choice called for wood shake roofs, one of the most flammable house tops on the market.

Once the flames leaped to the dense residential area on the west side of Laguna Canyon Road and into the Emerald Bay area, “you are talking street after street that went up like that,” Day said. “The wood shake roofs go up.”

One of the tools firefighters used on wood shingle homes in Irvine Cove was a chemical penetrating agent that firefighters call “Liquid Joy” or “Dawn” because it looks like dishwashing detergent. The wetting agent opens the pores in wood shingles so water soaks in instead of running off. “With that agent we were able to make quite a few saves” of threatened homes, Dailey said.

One of a fire department’s most important tools is their prevention efforts. And the Laguna Canyon fire was made worse by its longtime lack of attention.

Ironically, much of the area that burned was at the top of the list for upcoming prevention activities. County fire officials had planned to conduct a controlled burn on about 500 acres by January, just outside of Laguna Beach in order to rid the area of combustibles like dead grasses and shrubbery.

Times staff writer John O’Dell contributed to this report.