Woman Critically Burned in Fire

A 40-year-old woman was in critical condition Tuesday with burns over 50% of her body after an early morning fire gutted her Santa Ana apartment, fire and hospital officials said.

Sally Pesce was in the living room at the single-story complex of garden units when her husband--asleep in another room--awoke to smell smoke, said investigators and neighbor Helen Coxe, 77, who heard screaming.

“I thought, ‘What a time to be having a fight,’ ” said Coxe, who has lived at the apartments for 18 years. “I went into my bathroom and opened the window and looked out right behind me and there were flames going 20 or 30 feet into the air.”

The three-alarm blaze, in the 1600 block of East 17th Street, was reported to firefighters at 5:06 a.m. It caused $125,000 in damage, destroying the Pesces’ apartment and damaging two neighboring units, Battalion Chief Tom Skelley said.

About 60 firefighters battled the blaze and controlled it in less than 30 minutes, Skelley said.

Investigators were not releasing the cause of the fire Tuesday, but Skelley said it started inside the Pesces’ unit and spread to the wood-shingle roof through the attic.

A spokeswoman at UCI Medical Center in Orange said Pesce was in the burn unit with second- and third-degree burns over 50% of her body. The most severe burns were to her legs, Skelley said.

By the time Coxe got outside, firefighters and paramedics had Pesce lying on the front lawn, where they had to cut away her jewelry, Coxe said.

“I put on my robe and grabbed a box with my important papers and my glasses, and stood with my other neighbors, who were in various states of stress,” she said.