Survival Skills : Some Houses Stood Tall After the Smoke Cleared-Luck or Planning?

Conventional wisdom holds that no home could have withstood the 2,000-degree firestorm that blasted more than 300 homes in Laguna Beach.

But proud homeowners and local architects are lauding a few “miracle houses” in the devastated Mystic Hills neighborhood that were left untouched by the blaze.

The homes’ saving grace, say the owners, was use of fire-retardant materials and non-combustible landscaping. Though many similarly protected homes did burn, the defenses gave the surviving homes an important edge.

“Where is that fire crew going to stop? At the home that has the best defendable space,” said Capt. Dan Young, an Orange County Fire Department spokesman. “Firefighters want to be successful, and they want to survive.”

After the rest of the 1500 block of Tahiti Avenue was swept in flames about 4 p.m. Oct. 27, the home of Doris Bender and To Bui had not ignited, said Orange County firefighters. “It made it clear to (firefighters) that that would be a place to make a stand,” said Young, who talked with the team that saved the home. There was also a fire hydrant nearby to provide high water pressure.

Bui had built the house with double-paned windows, thick stucco walls, sealed eaves, concrete tile roof and abundant insulation. Young praised Bui’s design. “He went beyond what we require and made it even safer,” he said.

Another homeowner, Bob Lawson, says his Skyline Drive home was also saved by his comprehensive fire defenses. His home has a fire-resistant roof, double-paned glass windows and a whole-house fan that moved hot air out of the house.

For other homeowners, the edge came from fire-resistant landscapes that acted as a buffer.

John and Susan Parks now swear by the 150-foot swath of ice plant that protected them from fire in the canyon below. Their home in the 1400 block of Skyline Drive was untouched while the rest of the neighborhood burned to the ground.

Martin Pestana says his home in the 1400 block of Coral Avenue was also saved by ice plant, which he had planted for ease of care rather than fire-protecting qualities.

These four houses survived in a neighborhood where nearly 200 homes were destroyed.

Members of the Architectural Guild of Laguna Beach have begun to study the homes to discover what design elements may have saved them. So far, it appears that fire-resistant materials were important in keeping the homes safe, said architect Chris Abel.

But others argue it was just luck.

“I think people would tell you that most of the houses would have burned, no matter what they were made of,” said John Gustasson, head of the Laguna Beach Building Department.

“I think it had to do with the speed of the fire and the intensity of the fire,” Gustasson said. “They could have been non-combustible buildings, but the fire would have gone inside and burned them anyway.”

Architect Douglas Snow said many people have wrongly trumpeted Bui’s home as a “miracle house” that owes its life to clever construction and foresight.

“If that house had been in the path of the fire, it would have burned too,” Snow said. “Providence had a lot to do with it.”

Not just providence, say those homeowners whose residences escaped the fire.

“This wasn’t all luck,” said Susan Parks, whose house was literally skipped over by the blaze. Twenty houses on each side of her home and scores on the hillside behind her were ignited by flames that burst from a canyon.

“As these houses were burning, our ice plant was slowing the fire down,” John Parks said.

The Parkses, both contractors, built their three-bedroom home in 1977. After a nearby fire in 1980, they ripped out more than 50 trees and bushes in their back yard and stripped off their wood-shake roof.

“We took out every tree on all sides of the house,” said John Parks, looking down the steep slope of his back yard.

“Our neighbors laughed at us. And it wasn’t easy cutting all those down,” he said.

Parks said he spent about $7,500 for a Cal-Shake composite roof to replace his wood-shake roof. He also fireproofed his lower deck and sealed his eaves with stucco.

He said people need to go beyond code with construction. “The code at the time was ‘cedar shake roofs are fine.’ But it doesn’t take a mental genius when fires are coming every couple years to figure that all it takes is that one spark.”

Parks said the fire-protective measures helped him get an insurance policy for the house with Allstate.

Ezell Atwood, their insurance agent, said it did indeed make a difference. “We were going to deny it, but when I went out and inspected (the Parks home), we went ahead and covered it,” Atwood said.

Atwood said the house may now be written up in his company’s internal newsletter. “They went to a lot of effort, and a lot of continuing effort, to make it as fireproof as possible,” Atwood said.

Parks said his son Tyler, 22, was at the house when the fire struck, and saw how the stucco-sealed eaves helped protect the house. Neighboring homes caught fire when the heat from the canyon torched their exposed wooden eaves, Parks said his son told him.

Dry vegetation also condemned many homes. His son reported that as the fire approached, some neighbors were out with handsaws trying to clear their yards. “A lot of people at the end were trying to cut down their trees and water their roofs and didn’t even have time to get out their stuff,” Susan Parks said.

To Bui paid attention to the smallest details of his home to decrease the chance of the house catching fire.

He vented his roof from the side of the house rather than from under the eaves, where flames might have been able to enter. He used drywall in his garage, though exposed wood is permitted on walls that do not adjoin the house. Bui said he also insulated the whole house, which helped keep out the fire’s heat.

“Wherever it was empty, I put in insulation. People told me I was crazy,” he said with a smile.

Bui said he spent about $350,000 on the materials for his four-bedroom, 3,300-square-foot ocean-view home. Two broken windows were the only things damaged in the uninsured home.

He said a side-balcony also gave firefighters a place from which to battle flames from a neighboring home just 14 feet away.

“You can have a wonderfully safe house, but unfortunately you’re at the mercy of your neighbors,” said fire captain Young. “If your two neighbors burn, your couches and anything combustible in your house will probably ignite from the radiant heat.”

While some people put advance work and planning into protecting their homes from fire, Martin Pestana said he fireproofed his home by accident. The ice plant, a low-growing succulent ground cover, was just easier to take care of, he said.

The steep slope next to Pestana’s home wears a protective bib of ice plant. His neighbors’ yards are scorched, with black sticks of trees and shrubs next to their homes. Now Pestana blesses the moisture-holding plant for saving his home from the fire. “It burned the whole slope, but at the ice plant it just stopped,” he said.

Bob Lawson said his home in the 1500 block of Skyline Drive survived the fire because of a combination of defenses.

He described his residence as if it were surrounded by a suit of armor. “If you fill all your chinks, then you won’t have a problem,” he said.

Lawson said his defense included a fire-resistant asphalt composite shake roof, double-paned glass, a shrub-free back yard, and a four-foot-high fence between his back yard and the north face, where Santa Ana winds swept in toward the home.

A neighbor’s tree fell on his roof, Lawson said, but did not ignite it.

When Lawson fled his home, he flipped on the whole-house fan, which pushed hot air out of the attic. Lawson said he believes the fan helped keep the interior of the house cool enough that it did not burst into flame.

Lawson said many of his neighbors covered their wood shake roofs with a metal sheeting. But when the flames approached, the wood caught fire underneath the metal, he said.

“The roof catches fire, but the firemen can’t put any water on it,” Lawson said firefighters had told him. “It was supposed to be fire-proof.”

Lawson suffered only one burned eave in the fire. A rope doormat on the north side burned, but the door, covered with aluminum, did not catch fire.

Abel, one of the Laguna architects studying the houses that survived, said in the future people need to build “dead zones” around houses that are completely free of combustible vegetation. A 100-foot-wide path would be good, he said.

“When you have close groupings of houses, you protect the whole grouping with fuel modification,” Abel said.

Young of the fire department agreed on the need for firebreaks and communitywide cooperation.

“We don’t say make your home safe; we say make your neighborhood non-combustible,” he said. “Each home has to be built so that it will survive a snowstorm of fire.”

Miracle House in Mystic Hills

To Bui built his home in the 1500 block of Tahiti Avenue above code so it would withstand fire. The Orange County Fire Department has praised Bui’s design, which used tile roof, double-paned windows, thick stucco walls and fire-retardant landscaping.

A. Eaves: Narrow eaves between the roof and exterior walls are sealed with stucco. There are no ventilator panels in the eaves, so flames could not get in from underneath.

B. Roof: Non-flammable concrete roof tiles are nailed down, so they won’t not rip off in high winds.

C. Roof ventilators: Air comes into the attic crawl space through vents at the front and rear of the house and leaves through vents on the top of the roof.

D. Decks: Bottoms of decks are finished with stucco.

E. Side porch: Firefighters were able to stand on the side porch to fight flames from the next-door house, only 14 feet away.

F. Lower windows: On the lower level of the house, five small windows are set in a foot-thick concrete wall. This helped keep out heat from surrounding burning houses.

G. Walls: Exterior: One-inch thick stucco siding; no exposed wood. Lower-level walls are one-foot thick concrete.

Interior walls: Drywall throughout the house is five-eighths of an inch thick rather than the standard half an inch; insulation is tucked into every open wall space. Despite intense heat outside, the interior stayed cool enough that it did not ignite.

H. Windows and skylights: Double-paned windows helped keep heat out. The outer panes on two windows broke, but the inner panes continued to protect the home. Two overhead skylights imported from Germany are made of double-paned glass. Conventional plastic skylights would have melted, allowing embers to fall into the home.

I. Landscaping: The yard is kept clean of dry brush and weeds. No tall, dry trees are near the house. Much of the landscaping is done in water-retaining plants; ice-plant under the rear decks helped keep the fire at bay.

Researched by WILLSON CUMMER / For The Times