Defending the Indefensible : Fires Stir Renewed Calls for Aqueduct, but Officials Say It Wouldn’t Have Been Enough

Even an army assembled in advance with the most sophisticated equipment could not have prevented most of the destruction sparked by runaway wildfires in Laguna Beach and other parts of the county, Orange County Fire Chief Larry Holms said Friday.

“Some areas were simply indefensible,” Holms said. “When you have homes sitting on stilts high up on a hill, surrounded by vegetation with fire coming right at them, there is no way to save them.”

This week’s wildfires produced a devastation that fire officials had warned of for decades. It was an inevitable consequence of growth in a county where homeowners and developers have continued to scrape away lush coastlines and pristine hills to squeeze in one South County neighborhood after another, seemingly oblivious to the mounting potential danger.

County residents finally paid the price this week when the firestorm descended on Laguna Beach and rural areas along Ortega Highway, exposing the true cost of all this development: low water pressure and obstructed and narrow access to residential neighborhoods. In Laguna, some argue that the fire’s march to the sea was aided by the lack of an adequate reservoir; residents have bickered for years over the idea of building a structure along the canyon.

Other factors that may have affected the response to the fire were also being raised Friday. Fire crews called in from other parts of the state arrived only to find that their hoses wouldn’t connect with local water hydrants. Other firefighters said there was a shortage of water and that there was the inevitable confusion that results when so many disasters are occurring simultaneously.

Although some authorities disagreed over whether the response from state and federal agencies could have been quicker, Holms remained steadfast in his belief that the fire could not have been stopped under any circumstances. He said Laguna residents’ penchant for lush landscaping and combustible building materials made their homes easy targets.

“You can’t point the finger at the state, the county or the city on this,” the chief said. “Everyone had the responsibility to improve the survivability of their homes. Frankly, I’m amazed that (the damage) isn’t worse.”

In the Mystic Hills region of Laguna Beach, where conservative estimates placed the losses at 150 homes, firefighters faced one water-related problem after another as the flames raged Wednesday.

Often there simply wasn’t enough water to go around. When there was enough water, there wasn’t always enough pressure to pump it uphill at maximum flow. Firefighters on one street often cadged water from their counterparts on another.

“Nobody wants to give it up,” Orange County Firefighter Rink Nemnich said as he sat on the back of his engine on Skyline Drive, helpless.

“We had one guy come by and ask us to try and save his house, but I told him we couldn’t, we were out of water. He was upset, but he understood,” he said.

Left with dry wells, a shortage of water tankers and “Bambi buckets”--150-gallon capacity baskets toted by helicopters--firefighters eventually drained swimming pools.

Relief efforts were further hampered when firefighters from Tulare and Kings counties, who had traveled about 300 miles to help, were bedeviled by their hydrant attachments, which didn’t fit some of the local hydrants. After the Oakland hills fire in 1991, the state passed a law that required all hydrants in the state to be uniform, Tulare County Fire Capt. Pete Arnet said.

“But the rules are probably less than a year old,” he said. “And it’s going to take awhile to standardize things across the state.”

With Laguna residents still picking through debris Friday, political differences were quickly revived. In recent years, city and local water district officials had stepped up campaigns to convince residents that more water storage was critically needed, especially in the hilly Top of the World neighborhood, which had been raked by the recent fires.

The water district has had plans for a 3-million-gallon reservoir since 1990. Members of Village Laguna, the city’s most powerful political group, have opposed the proposal, saying the reservoir site, near Aliso and Wood Canyons Regional Park, is too environmentally sensitive.

City Councilman Wayne L. Peterson, a strong supporter of the underground reservoir, said the fire presented a dramatic argument for moving ahead with the project.

“All I know is that the reservoir is meant to provide a steady gravity flow in a time of emergency and provide water for all the neighborhoods below it,” he said. “Whether it would have stopped the fire or not, I don’t know.

“The water district officials are professional and they believe we are substantially under-reserved. I think it’s time we started working with them.”

Joe Sovella, the Laguna Beach Water District’s general manager, said the district just took possession last week of some of the land for the reservoir after trying to get the property condemned through eminent domain. But the district still does not have full ownership of the land, and must clear other environmental and bureaucratic hurdles, he said.

Orange County Fire Capt. Dan Young said a reservoir would have made little difference. “You’d need a system 10 times the size of Laguna Beach’s (water system) to fight a fire of this size, a fire that might happen once in 20 years,” he said. “It’s unreasonable to be prepared that way, which is why firefighters carry water with them. No community is ever going to have as much water as you would need in a situation like this.

Concerns about how quickly help arrived in Laguna also fueled the debate.

On Wednesday afternoon, while Board of Supervisors Chairman Harriett M. Wieder was declaring a countywide state of emergency and with Laguna Beach fully engulfed, Orange County Fire Division Chief Pat Walker said the county was on a statewide waiting list for fixed-wing air support that would bring large-capacity air tankers for water and chemical drops over the most serious areas.

During that time, Walker said most of the air support was left to law enforcement helicopter units from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and the Anaheim Police Department.

Orange County Fire Capt. Gary Stenberg, stationed in Irvine, said his crew was among the first three engines to arrive at the start of the arson fire, located off Laguna Canyon Road less than a mile south of the San Diego Freeway.

Stenberg said that given the fire’s pace and the force of the Santa Ana winds fueling it, aircraft was needed immediately to curb the blaze when it broke out just after noon.

“In this particular case, aircraft would have made a difference but we didn’t have it,” he said. “They did not arrive on scene quick enough in this case to make a difference.”

Chief Holms said Friday that an air support fleet was making drops of water by Wednesday evening in response to the county’s call for help. He said any delay could be been explained by urgent fire needs in other parts of the state.

As the Laguna Beach fire continued and another fire flared along Ortega Highway, Holms said Orange County gradually moved up on the state-response priority list until late Wednesday when the local threat to life and property became the highest priority in the state.

The chief said local officials initially turned down offers of two Marine Corps helicopters to aid in the water drops, although it was not clear why they refused the aid. When local fire officials reversed that position later in the day, Holms said the apparent miscommunication may have resulted in the helicopters not responding.

Master Sgt. Don Long, spokesman for El Toro and Tustin Marine Corps Air Stations, said Friday that Marines assisted the local firefighting effort where they could, mostly by helping comb through the rubble.

Some Marines with specific firefighting training also were dispatched, but in general Marines were limited to non-firefighting efforts because of their lack of training in that area, he said.

Capt. Young said initial efforts to secure outside personnel and equipment were hampered by fires elsewhere in the state, he said.

“The whole state was burning. Everyone wanted helicopters. There were not enough to go around,” he said.