Sawdust Fire Tough to Get Out : Combustion: A fire captain says the smoky, smelly outdoor blaze could have been handled easier if piles of wood chips had been separated. But now it could be burning for quite awhile.

Flames up to 100 feet high whipped through piles of wood chips at a sawdust plant across from the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station Saturday, creating a plume of smoke visible across the county.

Firefighters said the blaze started Friday afternoon and by Saturday had consumed about two of the six acres of chips blanketing the Golden Coast Sawdust Products Inc. property off Irvine Boulevard, which was closed for much of the day between Sand Canyon Avenue and Alton Parkway. No injuries were reported, and there was no damage to structures.

“Fires like this can go for weeks sometimes,” Orange County Fire Capt. Dan Young said.

County and El Toro Marine firefighters used bulldozers to carve corridors through the mounds of wood chips, piled as high as 50 feet, in hopes of keeping the flames from spreading into unburned sections.

The fire would have been easier to control had the mounds of wood been separated into smaller piles, as required by fire codes, Young said. The plant was in compliance with codes during a fire-safety inspection earlier this year, although warnings have been issued in the past to keep mounds separated, Young said.

Authorities said the fire, which might have started through spontaneous combustion, posed no danger Saturday to nearby base housing, plant nurseries or avocado groves. Fire officials received hundreds of calls from residents throughout the county who smelled smoke, Young said. At one point early Saturday, thick smoke spread by shifting winds triggered smoke detectors in many nearby Marine base homes.

Some neighbors expressed concern about the possibility of the fire’s burning for days.

Geoff Jurack, a sixth-grade teacher at El Toro Marine School, feared that smoke and ash could disrupt classes. That has happened before from other fires in the area, including one at a fertilizer plant, he said.

“It’s definitely going to affect our school,” he said. “You can smell it for miles. . . . I can’t imagine that even wood burning is going to be healthful.”

Company employees detected the fire at about 4 p.m. Friday and attempted to put it out themselves. The County Fire Department was called in after midnight to the unincorporated area when the fire was clearly out of control, Young said.

“If we would have been called eight hours earlier, we could have really minimized the damage,” Young said.

The plant grinds wood into chips and compost fertilizer. Smaller fires are relatively common in such deep wood chip piles, Young said. Typically plant and other organic materials buried below the wood decompose, generating heat that sparks flames. The deeper the pile, the more chance that enough heat will be trapped to set off a fire.

“Sometimes you only know it’s burning by smoldering smoke on the surface,” Young said.

Plant owner David Braga could not be reached for comment. The cause of the fire is under investigation, Young said.