Fire Ravages Business Center : Downtown San Juan Capistrano Blaze Destroys Restaurant, Tortilla Factory, Salon and Bakery

An early morning fire Wednesday in a commercial center two blocks from Mission San Juan Capistrano destroyed most of a cluster of businesses, including a restaurant, a tortilla factory, a beauty salon and a bakery.

No one was injured in the 6:40 a.m. blaze in a 6,000-square-foot wing of Plaza del Obispo II on Paseo Mercado de Capistrano, but firetrucks and a power outage snarled traffic throughout the city’s small downtown and along the nearby Interstate 5.

Although the exact cause of the fire remains under investigation, it appears to have been accidental, said Emmy Day, a spokeswoman for the Orange County Fire Authority. Damages are estimated at more than $2 million, Day said.

An emotional Paul Sandbloom of Fountain Valley, owner of the burned-out Capistrano Grill, estimated his loss at about $250,000.

“I don’t even want to think about what this will cost,” said Sandbloom, whose restaurant--next door to the tortilla factory--was the hardest hit. Sandbloom said he received a call at home in the morning that his burglar alarm had been activated but did not know exactly what had happened until he arrived in San Juan Capistrano.

The fire began in the tortilla factory, El Molino de Oro, and spread to the other businesses through an adjoining attic, Day said. About 60 firefighters were trucked in from as far away as Irvine to fight the blaze, and although it was controlled by 9:30 a.m., some fire officials were still at the scene cleaning up at 5 p.m.

Victoria Johnson of Dana Point, who works at a Boston Chicken outlet in the strip mall next to the center, said that she saw smoke coming from the tortilla factory when she got to work just before 7 a.m.

“All of a sudden there was a whole row of flames,” said Johnson. “It went so fast it was frightening.”

The smoke could be seen throughout the Capistrano Valley, said Rodger Littlejohns, a jeweler who lives in San Juan Capistrano and works directly across the street from the burned building.

“I could see the smoke from my house. It looked like it was coming from our building,” Littlejohns said.

An electrical transformer on a power line adjacent to the burning building blew up, cutting electricity to a portion of downtown for two hours and making access to the blaze difficult, Day said.

“Part of the problem was that firefighters couldn’t get to the fire from the back side of the building,” Day said.

Compounding the problem, the entire roof of the building quickly became unstable, and firefighters had to battle the blaze from ladders and cranes, said Rich Witesman, a Fire Authority division chief.

“That’s not the ideal circumstance to tackle a blaze like this,” he said.

The 6-year-old building was equipped with automatic sprinklers, but the fire occurred in the roof and attic, away from the system, a fire official said.

Times correspondent Jeff Bean contributed to this report.