Confronting a Fiery Terror

Something was wrong with the wind.

Giselle Miller, 41, heard it whip through the trees Monday morning as she cooked scrambled eggs for her son, Grant, at their home near the Lemon Heights foothills.

“Wouldn’t it be scary if a fire broke out today, mom?” asked Grant, 14, although the Santa Ana winds kick up every October.

This time, they left an ugly calling card.

During breakfast, Miller’s husband called. “Fire,” he said.

Miller flipped on the TV and saw her close friend, Bonnie Decuollo, on the news. Decuollo, a quarter of a mile away, was standing in front of her flaming house on Afton Lane, in the eye of a wind-driven firestorm.

Four of 10 houses on Afton Lane were destroyed; the rest damaged. Just after 9 a.m., the fire roared down the street, turning the cul-de-sac of white picket fences and rose gardens into a smoky fog so thick that residents could not see across the street.

Until Monday’s fire captured the public’s attention, Lemon Heights “was one of the best-kept secrets of Orange County,” said Mike Hickman, general manager of Seven Gables Real Estate in Tustin.

A small, bucolic community of upscale homes, winding roads, horse trails and rolling hills, Lemon Heights has a population of about 3,800 and a median household income hovering at $100,000, according to 1990 census figures. Old eucalyptus trees and tall oaks are anchored in the spacious half-acre lots that are the norm in the unincorporated area just northeast of Tustin.

Within minutes Monday, white-hot embers jumped from roof to roof of the half-million-dollar homes.

Neighbors banged on one another’s doors. Spooked horses jumped fences, and flaming palm trees turned into torches.

By noon, when the fire was mostly under control, neighbors huddled in the street and shook their heads at the destruction wreaked by a capricious wind. Within a few hours, the quiet street--where neighbors dog-sat for one another and threw block parties--had turned into a disaster area, crowded with firetrucks, media and looky-loos who tramped across their neat front lawns and poked through their backyards without asking.

But neighbors rejoiced in small victories, like that of Sherman Fairbairn, who rescued his frightened black cat Rocco--whose whiskers were singed--from his family’s smoking house. And they cried with neighbors such as Decuollo, who lost her house and precious family heirlooms--her grandmother’s rosewood piano, oil paintings done by her great-grandmother and her twin daughters’ baby pictures.

Afton Lane neighbors who escaped with blackened roofs felt the heavy weight of survivors’ guilt.

“It’s incredible,” said Mike Hannegan, 22, who lives across the street from two gutted homes. “The thing is, I’m going to be here day after day, and I still got a home. I still got someplace to come every night. I don’t know what these people are going to do.”

Monday’s fire, which began in Lemon Heights, destroyed 10 homes and damaged 16 others. The worst destruction was on Afton Lane.

On Monday afternoon, the day after her 44th birthday, Decuollo stepped gingerly into her backyard through puddles of water left by firefighters, who were unable to save her home. She stood on a brick planter and peeked through her living room window.

“Oh, my gosh,” she gasped. “It’s history.”

Earlier, Decuollo was awakened by a crackling sound, the kind of noise a fireplace makes.

She looked out the window and saw a wall of fire. Immediately, she hustled her pajama-clad 12-year-old twin girls into the car and tore out of the driveway. She dropped the girls at a friend’s house and returned for her cats.

Her roof was flaming. Hot embers flew at her, burned through her white turtleneck sweater and stung her skin. They landed on her shoulder-length hair. She beat at them and fought her way into the house for her four cats. She found two of them and fled.

On Southeast Skyline Drive at Afton Lane, Barbara Hanson, 54, stood on her driveway and watched the media onslaught.

She has a wood-shingled roof like most of the neighborhood, and just that morning, a roofing company had called with an estimate on a fireproof roof.

“This isn’t a good time,” she told him. “Our roof is on fire.”

Hanson had heard the same sound of crackling fire that her neighbors described and jumped into action, even before a storm of embers landed on her roof, burning a few holes through it.

She knew the Santa Ana winds were tricky. Every year, the winds downed power lines and snapped trees. Sunday night, neighbors tucked away patio furniture and rolled barbecues inside when they heard the winds coming.

On Monday, Hanson saw the flames barreling past a grove of palm trees. She backed her car into the driveway and loaded it with valuables and keepsakes.

As it turned out, the fire didn’t spread her way, but she enlisted her termite inspector who had arrived that morning to hose down her roof.