Brea Plant Destroyed by Flames

A fire burned the 50-year-old plant of a rubber-parts company to the ground Tuesday afternoon, sending scores of employees and residents fleeing to the street and creating billowing black smoke visible for miles.

Almost 80 firefighters and several helicopters battled the fire at Esco Rubber Products in the 100 block of Brea Boulevard, which began at 5 p.m. and had gutted part of an empty day-care center and threatened an apartment complex before it was controlled two hours later, firefighters said.

Eight firefighters suffered minor injuries. Damage was estimated at $500,000.

Bob Gorham, Esco manager who was playing golf at the nearby Imperial Golf Course when the fire broke out, said he saw the smoke and knew right away that his company’s factory was ablaze.

“The smoke was so dark, there’s nothing around there that could have produced smoke like that but rubber,” he said.

Employees of Esco, a family-owned business that makes rubber plumbing parts such as washers and plungers, were grinding parts in a machinery office when sparks hitting a plywood wall started a fire, Gorham said. The employees tried to douse the fire with portable extinguishers, but flames engulfed the room in minutes, company officials said.

“I’ve been coming here every day for 30 years,” Gorham told a firefighter. “Now what? Now what do I do?”

The 10,000-square-foot building in a historic city block designated for restoration is about 50 years old and does not have a sprinkler system, firefighters said. Rubber parts were stored in bins inside and outside the plant, and sheets of “very heavy and very dense” raw rubber were rolled up on the side of the building, Fire Marshal Lon Cahill said.

“It makes it extremely difficult to extinguish,” he said. “Then the rubber melts into liquid and we have the runoff to deal with.”

A hazardous materials team covered the area with sand and pumped some of the melted rubber away to prevent it from running into the sewer system.

A cleanup at the site is expected to last through today, Cahill said. Authorities set up temporary shelter at a nearby senior center for residents of the Orange Villa Apartments complex, which is next to the plant, and other nearby residents who were not allowed back home Tuesday night.

Esco, which is owned by Newport Beach resident Pat Sullivan and was founded by his father, was about three weeks away from moving to a building 100 yards away, authorities said.

“The odds are that the new fire station was going to be at the spot where the [Esco] company was,” Councilman Glenn G. Parker said.

As employees ran out of the building, police and residents helped to evacuate about 100 people from the Four Square Church of Brea day-care center and several apartment buildings.

Gail Read, a teacher at the day-care center, was supervising about 12 children on the center’s playground when she looked up and saw smoke coming from the burning warehouse.

She herded the children back into the center, not thinking the fire was big. Moments later she looked over and saw smoke pouring from the structure.

“I just ran in [to the center] yelling, ‘Call 911!’ ” Read said. “In 15 minutes, that building was in flames. . . .”

Ryan Dowdy, 19, of Brea, was mounting a tire for a customer at the Big O Tire Store about 30 yards away when he saw flames and ran to the day-care center. Dowdy shepherded 23 children, ranging in age from 2 to 9, back to the Big O store.

As the children watched from inside, the brush caught fire and flames leaped to the roof of their center, which soon filled with smoke.

John Rivera, manager at Orange Villa Apartments, which are separated from the fire site by a 30-foot-wide alley, said he was working on model airplanes in his garage when his wife alerted him to the fire.

“I came out and saw flames shooting about 20 to 30 feet high, and there were explosions too,” he said. “It was hot and I was in pitch black smoke.”

Rivera, his wife and neighbors began knocking on doors and evacuating the residents, some of whom are in wheelchairs. Some grabbed suitcases of important papers left by the door in case of earthquakes.

Trisha Klawon, 45, who lives at Orange Villa with her mother, said she was on her way back into the smoke-filled apartment to find her cat when two police officers volunteered to rescue the pet.

“I have so many people to thank after this,” she said.

Charles Smith, 21, of Brea was one of those people. He was driving near his house when he saw the fire and stopped to see if anyone needed help.

“I just ran out and started carrying people down the stairs,” said Smith, who helped Klawon’s mother and her dog out of their apartment.

His 18-year-old friend Nicole L’Hommedieu pushed cars out of the fire’s way and afterward brought gallons of water from her house and served it to the victims.

Across the street, more than 100 spectators cheered the firefighters who battled the flames.