Firestorm Torches Malibu Area : Scores of Homes Destroyed as Thousands Flee : Inferno: Arson suspected in blaze that began in hillsides of Calabasas. The star-studded Malibu Colony is evacuated and narrowly spared.

A savage firestorm--driven by a barrage of powerful Santa Ana winds that had been predicted for days--raged across the Santa Monica Mountains from Calabasas to the Malibu oceanfront Tuesday, destroying scores of homes and burning at least five people, two of them critically.

Chased by a wall of fire burning along a two-mile front, thousands of residents fled with treasured belongings, clogging narrow canyon roads and blocking the routes of the firetrucks summoned to battle the blaze.

In a harrowing repeat of the fires that racked Southern California only a week ago, the fate of tens of thousands of canyon and beach-front dwellers rested with the capricious winds that have turned the region into a tinderbox.

Beginning with a spark of possibly suspicious origin, the fire devoured the richly vegetated hillsides of Calabasas and then turned with a vengeance down the steep canyons overlooking Santa Monica Bay. Within four hours, flames arrived on Pacific Coast Highway, leaving tragedy in their wake and panic in their path.

“This is hell, dude. I’m expecting to see Satan come out any time now,” said Ascanio Pignatelli, a UCLA graduate student who watched the flames creep down the hill toward his Pacific Coast Highway home just east of Big Rock Drive.

By nightfall, almost the entire city of Malibu had been evacuated--including the star-studded Malibu Colony, which was narrowly spared the destruction inflicted on 20,000 acres and an estimated 125 homes--including that of actor Charles Bronson. As the night wore on, homes to the south and north of Malibu were being threatened, as was the sprawling Pepperdine University campus.

The smoky orange glow of flames illuminated the Malibu oceanfront, an enduring symbol of the Southern California lifestyle--much like Laguna Beach of a week ago.

Also like many of last week’s fires, the Calabasas/Malibu blaze may have been the result of arson, according to Los Angeles County Fire Inspector Brian Jordan. “There is reason to believe this was deliberately set,” he said, declining to elaborate.

Los Angeles City Fire Department spokesman Mike Little said: “Some people were seen in the area.”

Although authorities had been warned in advance about Tuesday’s extreme fire conditions, which are expected to continue through this morning, they said there was little they could do to halt the advancing blaze. In fact, firefighters had to retreat from a command post--a fire station at Pacific Coast Highway and Carbon Canyon Road. In all, 2,500 firefighters from as far away as Las Vegas were deployed on quickly shifting fire lines.

At the same time, firefighters were also battling another wind-whipped inferno near Banning and a smaller fire near Poway in San Diego County. The Santa Anas are predicted to remain strong today, meaning others could suffer the fate of Jason Ness, 27, who lost his home on Old Topanga Canyon Road.

But Ness hung in to assist neighbors in trying to save theirs.

“Neighbors helping neighbors, that’s what it’s all about,” Ness said, while hosing down another family’s property. “My house already went. I got all the pictures off the walls, the family heirlooms, and my dog.”

On the Mountaintop

For a while, fire officials had hoped that despite the forecast for renewed Santa Ana winds, they might not materialize. But well before dawn Tuesday, the hot winds began to blow. At about 10:45 a.m., a small blaze broke out in the Calabasas area near Mulholland Highway and Old Topanga Canyon Road, which officials say may have been the work of an arsonist.

Marva Semet, who lives near there, said the power at her house went about 11 and she looked out her window to see what were probably the fire’s first flames.

“We saw it when it was about a foot by a foot,” said Semet. Because the wind was blowing wildly, she said, “we knew it was going to turn into something big.”

Fanned by gusts peaking at more than 50 m.p.h., the fire built rapidly as it raced south through rugged chaparral, moving so quickly that firefighters could do little more than sound the alarm.

At 11:15, Nancy Helsley, who was leading a group of students on a nature excursion in the Cold Creek Reserve, looked up to see an immense cloud of smoke mushrooming into the sky.

Helsley started the children on a seven-minute walk back up the driveway to their waiting school bus. “I felt that I had enough time, although I know that these things can move quickly,” Helsley said.

She and her students were lucky--they got out in time. Others didn’t.

Fire officials said one of the people burned critically was Duncan Gibbins, a British screenwriter who returned to a guest home near the flash point of the fire in a futile attempt to save a pet cat.

Gibbins, 41, suffered second- and third-degree burns over his upper body and scorched his lungs when he inhaled superheated air, fire officials said. He was reported in “extremely grave condition” at the Sherman Oaks Hospital burn center.

Art dealer Peter Alexander, owner of the home where Gibbins was staying, was away, but a carpenter, 40-year-old Ron Mass, suffered second- and third-degree burns over 60% of his body and was listed in critical condition.

For a time, the fire appeared to be heading toward the residential communities in Topanga Canyon. Instead, it bore to the right, picking off some of the homes at the top of Old Topanga Canyon Road before heading for Monte Nido.

The blaze followed the whim of the winds. While some houses in its path escaped untouched, others were reduced to stark ruins, silhouetted against an orange-gray pall of smoke.

From the time she first saw the fire, author Carolyn See had less than 10 minutes to escape the flames that claimed her house.

“We lived in a canyon for many years and we’ve seen many kinds of fires, but there was something about the smoke in the back yard, the density of the smoke, the heaviness, that made it perfectly clear that this was it,” she said later. “There was a hell of a lot of smoke on every side and the fire coming down the ridge toward us--about a block and a half away to the north.” See and her husband, John, drove about a quarter of a mile, parked the car and watched their house burn.

Monte Nido residents Stephanie and James Heng watched the smoke billowing overhead as the fire surged toward them.

“We’re just waiting, we have all our hoses ready,” Stephanie Heng said, as she and her husband resisted the orders to evacuate. “I know if I stay we can save the house, and if we leave there’s a chance we could lose everything.”

Long after many of their neighbors had left, the Hengs worked to water the roof, the wood deck and to seal attic vents against possible sparks.

“I am scared, but my husband, he knows how to take care of these things,” Stephanie Heng said before the flames reached Saddle Peak Ridge, well behind their home. “He’ll get us through it.”

Other residents had no choice but to flee.

In a dramatic helicopter rescue by one of her former students, aviator Lauretta Foy, 80, was plucked from beside the swimming pool where she had taken refuge as her hilltop home burned.

“The pilot did a very good job,” said her son Jim Foy of Hermosa Beach. “She’s OK. She didn’t suffer any injury.”

Jane Peckham grabbed her two Labrador dogs, her cat, a Balinese drum, a photo album and her passport and fled

“I’m dealing pretty well with my attachment to my worldly goods and everybody is OK,” she said later. “I always wanted to travel lighter.”

While the main body of the fire moved steadily south toward Malibu as the day progressed, erratic winds continued to cause new flare-ups along the mountain slopes behind the coastal town.

Near the historic Saddle Peak Lodge at the convergence of Pima and Coal canyons, residents braced Tuesday evening as fires raced across the ridgelines above them, encircling their community in flames.

As darkness fell, the flames burned upward, away from the homes below. But a line of fire that stretched for more than two miles along the canyon ridges made the situation frighteningly tenuous, and more than 100 firefighters cleared firebreaks in an attempt to prevent the blaze from spreading.

In Piuma Canyon, authorities warned that any shift in the wind or errant spark could transform the relative safety of the canyon bottom into a place of peril.

“If the wind generates, the fire will be here,” said Sgt. Allan Smith of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. “We’ll have to evacuate everybody.”

A Firestorm to the Sea

As more than 250 fire engines converged on the area to battle the blaze, Pacific Coast Highway was snarled to a standstill. All six lanes of traffic on the normally two-way road were jammed northwest from Santa Monica as the firetrucks competed with anxious residents rushing from work to try to save their homes.

A California Highway Patrol officer, trying desperately without success to move the traffic, said: “We’re trying to get people out, but everybody is driving so crazy.”

He then cried out in frustration: “You people have screwed it up for yourselves.”

Others trying to reach their homes continued north on foot, riding bicycles, mopeds and even on Rollerblades.

Some made it. But others found themselves stopped by either the fire or police lines as the blaze shot down the hill and began its flanking attack on Malibu. In a matter of hours, this home to the stars and to the well-heeled was in flames.

Along Pacific Coast Highway south of Malibu, encampments of displaced residents gathered to trade what information they had about the advancing fires. They huddled in the darkness--a clear, starry sky overhead, an inferno descending on them from the north and west.

One woman had her horse and four others in tow after rescuing them from the fire area and leading them to safety.

Above the coastline was a scene that had been repeated all too often in the last week: flames shooting 50 to 75 feet into the night sky, silhouetting million-dollar homes that seemed doomed to be in ashes by sunrise.

Throughout the area, another scene was repeated as well: residents questioning other residents as they returned from fire areas, car and portable radios tuned in for any hint of what was happening to their homes and neighborhoods.

One waiting woman was Dian Roberts, who tried to return to her Carbon Beach home to retrieve her two dogs. She walked nearly five miles before she was stopped.

“They came down on the beach and told me to get out of here, that if I went any further I was putting my life in jeopardy,” she said.

On Malibu Canyon Road, Hughes Aircraft Co.’s research laboratory also was threatened, forcing the company to evacuate 430 employees about 1 p.m., Hughes spokesman Richard Dore said.

Hughes’ own firefighting teams--including members from Hughes plants in El Segundo and Fullerton--joined local firefighters in keeping the blaze at a distance and clearing brush away from the lab, Dore said. The facility is on the east side of Pepperdine University. By late evening, the plant was being seriously threatened by the fire.

As the fire began on its destructive toward Malibu at midafternoon, about 100 students were evacuated from Webster Elementary School in Malibu to the Port Dume community center. Because of the fire, many parents could not get to them and about 40 children busied themselves eating pizza and watching the movie “Batman.”

“I’m scared because of my pets and my house,” said third-grader Brandon Zamel. “My friend’s house already burned down.”

As day turned to night, sheriff’s deputies went door to door evacuating even more residents as it became evident that firefighters were in a losing battle, that nothing was going to stop the flames in some parts of the art colony. The deputies shined spotlights into the hills to make sure no one was there, and did the same on the ocean side of the road.

Don Bergess, a project manager for a construction company, stood on Little Rock Drive. He said deputies had given him five minutes to gather all his belongings.

“How do you pack up a lifetime in five minutes? “ he asked. Bergess said he called his daughter, who lives with his ex-wife in West Los Angeles, to ask her. She told him to pack up a wooden horse they had made together and a banner that hung over her bedroom door.

Suddenly, the sheriff’s deputies, their lights flashing, were moving up and down the hill.

“Evacuate this area immediately,” one of the deputies blared through a loudspeaker. “The fire is only minutes away and moving in this direction.”

Bergess, shifted his car into gear and turned onto Pacific Coast Highway, turning to the west in hopes of glimpsing fire. Suddenly, the flames were in front of him, burning houses close by.

“Damn, damn, it’s going to take my house,” he said. “It’s right down to the ocean. Son of a bitch.”

There were more bleak and eerie scenes, people working to save anything and others who knew they could save nothing.

Carl Smith, an actor who rents a room at Las Flores Beach, had packed up his Waterford crystal, just in case he needed to run.

At the exclusive Malibu Colony, most of the residents had fled their oceanfront homes as the fire burned half a mile away. But some stayed, at least for a time, to fight. One was Barry Spikings, producer of such films as “The Deer Hunter.”

“Maybe we’re not being very smart,” he said. “But our home is worth several million dollars.

Next to Spikings’ home was that of Paul Almond, a producer of art films. He, too, had opted to stay.

“If the flames get too close,” said Almond, “we’ll just walk into the ocean.”

Soon afterward, the blaze crept within 200 yards of the community before firefighters beat it back.

Residents yelled for help and hosed down trees as the fire threatened several homes on the inland side of Pacific Coast Highway.

“That freaked me out,” said Matt Rapf, a real estate agent who was at his mother’s home. “That’s as close as I’ve seen it come. I was watching the news and I got a call from my neighbor who said, ‘Hey, have you looked out your window?’ I didn’t even know the fire had gotten that close.”

At the La Costa Beach Club, about two dozen people took refuge as the fire overran their homes, many of them in the multimillion-dollar price range.

“We thought it would be the best place to be,” said Century City lawyer Glenn Carins, who lost his $3-million beachfront home. “My house is gone,” he said dejectedly.

At 9:30 p.m., the fire began licking the eastern edge of the Pepperdine campus, and students were ordered to a gymnasium that university officials hoped would not be as susceptible to fire as other buildings on campus.

“It wasn’t tense before,” said Trudy Shirley of the first time they had gathered in the gym. “Now it’s a lot scarier.”

The Fire That Got Away

Though firefighting forces had been alert to the likelihood of new blazes throughout the week, the speed and intensity of Tuesday’s outbreak forced firefighters into a daylong retreat.

As the flames cut a swath through rugged, brush-covered terrain that had not burned in nearly 30 years, embattled fire crews were forced time and again to retrench under the cover of protective heat shields. At one point, when crews became overrun by advancing flames in Tuna Canyon, fire officials were forced to clear emergency radio frequencies to order an aerial strike to help save them.

An early command post at Pacific Coast Highway and Carbon Canyon Road, where fire officials spearheaded their tactical attack through much of the day, had to abandoned as flames neared, with a new post hastily organized at Pepperdine University, far to the west.

By late afternoon, fire officials also were forced to begin moving bulldozers and hand crews out of a staging area at Pacific Coast Highway and Topanga Canyon Boulevard. That vital area, where scores of fire engines and hand-crew trucks were being assembled prior to deployment, lay on the opposite flank of the advancing fire. Crews there were having to move east away from the fire, reassembling at PCH and Sunset Boulevard, outside the popular Gladstones 4 Fish restaurant.

“We’re stretched right to the max right now,” said Los Angeles City Fire Capt. Steve Ruda, who said forces were scrambling to make a stand at the J. Paul Getty Museum, where artworks were being spirited out, and at other places where still more homes were being threatened.

“We’ll make a battle stand there,” Ruda said of the Getty. “(We) will not lose that museum.”

Firefighters were using a variety of tactics--fire engines to protect homes, hand crews to cut lines in hopes of slowing the fires progress through the highly incendiary brush, and aircraft to bombard the fire from above. However, as night fell, fire officials warned that they would be unable to keep their airplanes flying because of low visibility and smoke.

At the same time, said Ruda, Los Angeles city helicopters were having to be sent back to their base for overnight maintenance because they had been airborne for so many hours.

Throughout a hectic day, firefighting efforts were marked by moments of high-risk and chaos.

At one point, Los Angeles County Fire Capt. John Tripp stood at the edge of PCH and watched a crew of firefighters from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection hurtle past him.

Unable to flag them down, Tripp shouted by radio to the command post, “CDF just blasted by. They wouldn’t stop by staging. They are going where they want to.”

Despite the occasional confusion, fire crews from jurisdictions throughout Southern California managed to attack the flames at every available flank, enduring excruciating losses and managing a few notable victories.

Six truckloads of inmates from the California Youth Authority braved flames that leaped 50 feet in the air as they battled the fire in the hills above Malibu. They won a small battle there and moved on to other hot spots.

Dressed in red jumpsuits, wearing goggles drenched with water from helicopters overhead, the young inmates cut firebreaks in the rugged brush country as blizzards of embers, whipped by the wind, rained upon them.

Even so, they were glad to be there.

“You get to see things we used to see when we were free,” said Jeff Miller, 18, of Palmdale, who is in custody for a parole violation.

“It’s a (good) feeling that you can save somebody’s home,” said Jesse Mendoza, who is serving time for robbery at the Pine Grove Camp, 50 miles north of Sacramento.

Flames at the Desert’s Edge

Eighty miles to the east of Los Angeles, a raging fire near Banning, in northern Riverside County, was burning out of control and by nightfall had consumed more than 8,000 acres. Four homes and several outbuildings were destroyed and six people were injured.

The fire was caused by arcing power lines, according to California Department of Forestry officials who said they evacuated 500 people in Beaumont, Banning, and Cherry Valley, along with all schools in those cities.

“You could see the flames about a mile away,” said Colleen Cofer, a student at Coombs Middle School in Banning. “Some of the kids’ homes were burning and they were crying. They were really upset. They’re also some of the nicest homes in the area.”

“It was utter chaos,” said Sandra Tibbets, 33, of Beaumont. “Parents all over Beaumont were trying to find their kids at different schools and some of them could not find them.”

The Banning fire, burning in a southwesterly direction, crossed into San Bernardino County Tuesday afternoon and was moving slowly toward the somewhat static Oak Glen fire near Yucaipa.

Meanwhile, in the early afternoon, another fire broke out in a rugged and largely uninhabited area near Poway in northern San Diego County.

By nightfall, the Poway blaze had consumed more than 1,500 acres. No structures were in immediate danger, but some expensive mountainside homes and the Stoneridge Country Club are located within a few miles of the fire line.

Earlier Tuesday, as the winds began to increase, some residents in the Eaton Canyon area of Altadena--where last week’s fire had done so much damage--became concerned over several flare-ups in the nearby hillsides. A fire spokeswoman said the flare-ups, which occurred well within a firebreak cut to protect residential areas, were quickly extinguished.

Shortly after sundown, the winds fanned embers into flame in the area burned over in last week’s Thousand Oaks fire. The flames burned south toward the ocean, crossing Pacific Coast Highway west of Malibu, but no new homes were threatened.

More Fire Coverage

* A STATE OF MIND--Malibu embodies all the states of consciousness of Southern California. A22

* BURN VICTIMS--Director Duncan Gibbins, who was trying to rescue his cat, is among the most seriously burned. A25

* STALLED TRAFFIC--People take desperate measures as Pacific Coast Highway gridlocks. A25

* OTHER STORIES, PICTURES: A3, B2, D1