Gov. Wilson Declares O.C. Disaster, Opens Way to Aid

Gov. Pete Wilson declared fire-ravaged Orange County a disaster area Wednesday evening as flames destroyed more than 300 homes in Laguna Beach and other communities.

“I want to assure families whose homes are in the path of these fires that we are doing everything we can to protect them,” Wilson said Wednesday night.

Board of Supervisors Chairman Harriett M. Wieder said the declaration was warranted with the devastation in Laguna Beach, Villa Park and Anaheim Hills in order to make those communities and others eligible for state and federal assistance.

The worst of the firestorm centered in Laguna Beach.

The fire was believed to be arson, said Division Chief Pat Walker of the Orange County Fire Department.

Walker said Wednesday evening that no suspects had been identified.

By sundown, Orange County officials were surveying the Laguna Beach disaster area from the air.

With local resources “stretched to the limit” and with the Los Angeles area waging a firefight of its own, Wieder said a call had gone out to other Western states for manpower and firefighting equipment. She expressed hope that more resources could be flown in as early as Wednesday night.

“This is a most dangerous situation,” Wieder said.

Chief Walker said about 400 firefighters from every department in the county had been working since early in the morning, first to contain a destructive blaze in Villa Park and Anaheim Hills in which two homes were destroyed and 27 others damaged. The chief said the situation was under control by 3 p.m.

Almost immediately after containing the North County fire, the same army of firefighters then moved to Laguna Beach, where flames jumped wildly from home to home, forcing officials to call for reinforcements and mass evacuations.

By early Wednesday evening, the county’s Emergency Management Division had called for mandatory evacuations of areas in Laguna Beach, Emerald Beach and the Newport Beach coastal areas.

About the same time, the fast-moving fire threatened a shelter for evacuees at Laguna Beach High School. Residents were relocated north to a shelter at Corona del Mar High School in Newport Beach.

For most of the afternoon, the fire in Laguna Beach was visible from office buildings all around the county.

“Oh, my God,” Wieder said as she stood in her fifth-floor office at the County Hall of Administration watching the billowing smoke in the distance.

Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, whose district includes the devastation in Laguna Beach, watched the fire’s march on a television in his office.