THE WINDS : Santa Anas Take Only Minutes to Whip Up the Inferno : A nature center docent glanced west from Stunt Road at 10:45, seeing nothing unusual. By 11:05, smoke ballooned over Topanga.

With the capricious will of the mythological Furies, the Santa Ana winds screamed out of the desert Tuesday morning, needing only a minute point of ignition to release the power of the chaparral, the equivalent of 5,000 gallons of gasoline stored in each acre of brush.

The ignition came at 10:45 a.m. near the intersection of Old Topanga and Zuniga roads in the desiccated brush on the south side of Calabasas.

Los Angeles County fire officials are investigating reports that two men were seen near the ignition point. Although fire officials have withheld further details, screenwriter Doug Hayes told KCAL television that he saw two men in a blue pickup near the fire when it was still only 40 to 50 square yards in size.

Within 15 minutes, the only thing to do was get out of the way.

So ominous was the cloud of smoke, people as far as two miles away began a spontaneous evacuation.

At 10:45 a.m., Nancy Helsley, president of the Cold Creek docents, was standing on Stunt Road, two miles to the west, looking in the direction of the fire.

She saw nothing.

Twenty minutes later, Helsley was in the Cold Creek Reserve, leading a group of 60 students from Cienega Elementary School on a nature excursion.

“The kids said, ‘Look!’ ”

Over the old Camp Slauson area of Topanga a huge column of smoke was rising.

The docents immediately started the children on a seven-minute walk back up the driveway to their waiting school bus.

One of the docents went to get a van.

“I felt that I had enough time, although I know that these things can move quickly,” Helsley said. “I had no idea it would come that quickly.

“Some kids walked and we drove as many as we could,” Helsley said. “We came back and picked up another group.”

Once the children were on the bus and safely on their way, the docents began to unload valuable artifacts from the Stunt Ranch Nature Center: microscopes, stuffed animals and a mural of a Chumash village as it would have been 2,000 years ago.

They left. Helsley went to her home in Cold Canyon, a quarter mile farther west.

“I think I got home at 10 minutes to 12,” she said. “In that time, the fire was down at houses on Stunt Road.”

Before she knew it, the flames rushed through her community, lapping around her house but sparing it.

She looked at her clock.

It read 12:03 p.m.

She didn’t know whether the nature center had burned, but it seemed to her that it must have.

“I’m terribly afraid of the loss of the buildings at Stunt Ranch,” Helsley said.

The nature center at Stunt Ranch is a complex of historic structures that can’t be replaced. One is an 1889 cabin. Another was built in 1919.

“This year we won the governor’s historic preservation award,” Helsley said. “If the center is gone, I don’t know how we will go on.”

Another witness observed the early moments of the fire from her car window, like a pilot flying into the eye of the hurricane.

Just about the time Helsley had stood beside the road looking west, Maggie Barnett turned from Saddle Peak Road onto Stunt Road on her way to work.

“I became aware of the fire in the distance--northeast--at about 11:05,” said Barnett, a Los Angeles Times employee.

She stopped to talk to another motorist coming from the direction of the fire.

He said there was no danger, so she drove ahead.

As she passed Stunt Ranch, she saw the children filing into the school bus.

Just past the nature center, she drove under the shadow of a dark brown cloud.

“I could see flames above the ridge in front of me,” she said. “It seemed to me that the fire had grown to about 10 times the size when I first saw it.”

At Mulholland Drive, she saw sheriff’s deputies already going house to house, asking residents to leave.

Students were evacuating two private schools and Calabasas High School.

Their parents’ cars were backed up along Mulholland.

At 11:45 a.m., she left the California Highway Patrol checkpoint at Mulholland Highway and Old Topanga Canyon Boulevard.

The officers were turning away everyone trying to get into the mountains.

A woman in a black Jeep-type vehicle was shouting that she needed to get her children out. But the CHP was apparently making no exceptions.

Barnett went on to work. She had not yet learned Tuesday evening whether she had a house to return to.

Racing an Inferno

Nearly 1,000 firefighters battled the fire that rushed down the Santa Monica Mountains from Calabasas to the Pacific Ocean. From the air and on land they raced to stay ahead of the wind-driven flames, dumping water and fire retardant on the fire that burned more than 20,000 acres.

A DEADLY WIND

* Fire officials estimate that fires pushed by Santa Anas spread five to six times faster than other brush fires.

* Wind speed increases as air funnels through mountain passes.

* Air that flows over and through mountain passes has lost almost all moisture.

FIGHTING THE FIRE

The Los Angeles County Fire Department’s arsenal included:

* Air tankers

* C-130 Hercules aircraft

* Helicopters

* Hundreds of fire engines

THE SPEED OF THE FIRE

Firefighters calculate the forward march of a fire in “chains per hour.” A “chain” equals 66 feet, equaling 80 chains to the mile. A fire moving at 80 chains per hour--or 1 m.p.h.--is considered potentially deadly and a fire moving at 160 chains per hour--or 2 m.p.h.--is devastating. Tuesday’s fire was moving at 3 m.p.h.

ESCAPING THE FLAMES

Evacuations, beginning in early afternoon, clogged the canyon roads and Pacific Coast Highway. By evening, some people were being evacuated by boat. PCH was finally closed from Ventura County to Sunset Boulevard to all but emergency traffic. The fire began at 10:45 a.m. and reached the ocean at 2:30 p.m.