Wind-Fueled Firestorms Tear Through Southern California

By DEXTER FILKINS, MICHAEL G. WAGNER and RENE LYNCH

Oct. 22, 1996 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

Firestorms fueled by furious winds blasted capriciously across Southern California on Monday, destroying more than 30 homes in northern San Diego County and 10 more in Orange County, while firefighters and residents fought fiercely overnight to save homes as flames roared to the Pacific Ocean into Malibu.

The widespread destruction conjured up the harrowing images of fires that ravaged the region just three years ago.

As with the tumultuous firestorms of 1993, emergency workers found themselves simultaneously fighting fires on several broad fronts:

* In the Orange County community of Lemon Heights, 10 homes were destroyed and 23 buildings were damaged by a fire sparked by a downed power line. Three firefighters suffered minor injuries before the blaze, which caused an estimated $3.5 million in damage, was declared out by early evening.

* In the northern San Diego County community of La Costa in the city of Carlsbad, at least 50 homes were destroyed in a fire that charred 4,500 acres. The fire of unknown origin broke out about 2 p.m. in the Elfin Forest and Harmony Grove areas. More than 1,000 people were forced to evacuate.

* In Los Angeles County, fire raced from Calabasas to the Pacific Ocean, breaching Pacific Coast Highway in three places by 9:30 p.m. More than 10,000 acres were burned and hundreds of residents forced from their homes. Despite flames that dramatically filled the skies, only two homes and several sheds had been destroyed by late evening. The cause of the fire had not been determined.

* In San Bernardino County, a fire ripped though a dairy farming community area near Chino, burning 40 acres, razing one home and three hay barns, and damaging several other houses. Six firefighters suffered injuries.

The fires drew hundreds of firefighters, helicopters and water-dropping airplanes as residents fought the flames with hoses, buckets and bare hands. Some ran to their roofs, where they sprayed the flames with garden hoses.

“I feel like I’m in a movie, a really bad movie,” said Gail Neuman, a 43-year-old mother of four, as she stood outside her smoldering home near Lemon Heights. “I’m all cried out.”

The onrushing flames and the television reports that accompanied them fueled memories of the 1993 firestorms. In that series of 26 separate fires from Malibu to Orange County, most of which began Oct. 27, three people died, 159 were injured and more than 1,000 structures were lost across 202,000 devastated acres.

Monday’s fires, the first of the season, were fueled by the annual autumn mix of high winds, arid air and combustible scrub. Early Monday, the Santa Ana winds gusted out of the west at as much as 79 mph. The humidity dropped to 6%. By comparison, Palm Springs--in the desert--recorded a humidity of 12%.

The winds also knocked out electricity to about 56,000 people in Orange County, while the gales and smoke contributed to a handful of accidents along the Santa Ana Freeway.

Forecasters predicted the high winds will die down over the next few days, as the high pressure system hovering over Southern California moves out.

Orange County

In Lemon Heights, the fires left an eerie scene: charred houses, yards crisscrossed with fire hoses, smoky skies and homeowners weeping in the ruins.

“We couldn’t save her house,” Neela Mousavian sobbed as she surveyed the smoldering frame of her home. “I ran up the street and begged the firemen to come to my mother’s house. I screamed, ‘Please come, it’s going to go.’ But they didn’t get there in time.”

Fire officials believe the blaze began near the Oakridge Tustin Private School on Bent Tree Lane about 9 a.m., when a falling tree snapped a power line. The fire destroyed one house there, then jumped downhill several blocks to Stockbridge Road, where it razed another. Driven by the winds, the fire leaped to Afton Lane, where it did its worst damage, destroying four more homes.

“You had the fire hopscotching around,” Orange County Fire Authority spokeswoman Maria Sabol said.

By noon, the blaze had been contained when the fire didn’t spread beyond the few dozen homes. Firefighters used helicopters, planes and trucks loaded with water to finally quell the fires.

The same area was hard hit in November 1967, when the Paseo Grande Fire destroyed 66 homes and 50,000 acres in Lemon Heights and the surrounding area.

When the fire hit Monday, some residents were at work, others were in bed. By the time many residents recognized what was happening, it was too late.

“I didn’t try to save my furs or my jewelry or any of my husband’s things,” said Maryam Boyce, whose house on Stockbridge Road was razed. “All I had time to do was get my photo albums, my pictures, that’s it.”

Neuman, the nurse, had just put the cats out when she smelled smoke. She glanced northward, toward Red Hill Avenue, and saw billows of gray clouds. She rousted her children from bed, dialed 911 and took her 8-year-old to a neighbors’ house two streets away.

“By the time I got back my house was on fire,” Neuman said. “I started grabbing baby pictures.”

She had planned for just such a day. Because her two parents are smokers, Neuman had learned to store her coveted baby pictures and her children’s report cards in paper sacks, in the closet, ready to go.

Still, she barely made it out in time. The only thing left standing was a pine tree.

“One of my sons didn’t even have his socks on,” Neuman said.

Afterward, with her house reduced to smoking embers, Neuman said she couldn’t believe what she was living through.

“This isn’t supposed to happen to you,” she said. “It’s supposed to happen to your neighbors.”

In fact, it did.

The house just across from Neuman’s was gutted, its interior walls black and peeling away. Just inside, a floor-to-ceiling grandfather clock still stood, seemingly unscathed.

Winds carried embers more than half a mile, and even set a curbside car afire.

About 225 students fled on buses from the Oakridge school, bringing with them an assortment of classroom pets, including a guinea pig, two rabbits and a turtle.

When word of the fire spread through the Lemon Heights area, families first took care of their own, and then started helping each other.

Scott Byington, 44, was driving down Afton Lane when the fire grew large. A former volunteer firefighter who had battled the Laguna blazes, Byington stopped at a column of smoke, jumped from his car and started looking for someone to help.

Byington and a gardener arrived just as the home of Helen Maxwell, a 30-year resident, began to catch fire. They jumped on the roof.

“I was tearing out shingles with my hands, and the other guy was spraying them off with a garden hose,” Byington said. “It’s just one of those things. You don’t think. You just do it.”

Maxwell’s house was saved.

So too was the house of George Moe, who lives on the corner. When Moe rushed outside to extinguish the fire in his yard, a neighbor already had grabbed a garden hose and done it for him.

Some of the scenes bordered on the surreal. Children wandered the streets, complaining of Halloween costumes left inside, of burned bikes and Nintendo games. At the Tustin Ranch Golf Club, water-scooping helicopters dipped down into an adjacent lake and stunned the golfers.

“We had a helicopter sit right down in the middle of the 9th fairway,” General Manager Mike Lichty said.

By midday, housing contractors already had descended on the neighborhood, passing out business cards and offering estimates on the spot.

Kathy Klitzner, 34, didn’t need them. Just three weeks ago, she and her husband, Erik, invested in a new roof on the house. A medical supply worker in Temecula in San Diego County, Klitzner rushed home from work when she got an emergency call from her son’s school.

Soon after, Erik arrived with two friends. They jumped on the roof and began hosing down the house, dressed in business suits.

The roof held.

“I’m going to call my roofer,” Klitzner said Monday, “And go kiss him.”

San Diego County

By nightfall, it appeared that the last of Monday’s fires would be the most damaging.

Residents of La Costa started evacuating about 5 p.m., and emergency centers were set up at two area high schools.

“We’ve lived here 18 years and never seen anything like this,” Peter Rosenberg said. “One of my neighbors was hysterical. Fire moved so quickly and came over the ridge. We only had a few minutes to leave.”

Rosenberg said he saw five homes in his La Costa neighborhood on fire. His wife, Ronni, said, “We grabbed all our pictures and our dogs and our tennis trophies as quick as we could.”

By 8 p.m., stiff winds pushed the fire toward Encinitas, San Marcos and Lake San Marcos. One man was taken to UCSD Medical Center with burns over 45% of his body, nursing supervisor Tom Banaszak said.

Los Angeles County

In Malibu, the situation remained tenuous late into the night, with one fact of nature working in its favor. As Malibu city spokeswoman Sara Maurice said: “Malibu has a natural, built-in firebreak. Unfortunately, it’s the Pacific Ocean.”

As flames leaped at times hundreds of feet, they skipped and dodged mostly between populated enclaves like Monte Nido, Malibu Bowl and the Pepperdine University campus.

The only homes that were reported destroyed were one along Mulholland Highway, near the fire’s origin in Calabasas, and another in Stokes Canyon.

As dusk fell and the fading light revealed the jack-o-lantern-like glow of scattered embers, Lloyd Smith, 56, stood shaking his head beside the ruins of his onetime family home in Stokes Canyon.

“I’ve never been so frustrated in my life,” he said after describing the helpless feeling of watching his home consumed by flames.

Los Angeles County Fire Department officials were concerned about 50-mph wind gusts, expected to continue or even increase during the night. They were unable to predict an end to the conflagration.

“We wanted to get it while it was small,” Los Angeles Fire Capt. Steve Valenzuela said about the fire that started in Calabasas. “But Mother Nature is in control of this fire.”

A massive deployment of at least 1,500 firefighters, 13 helicopters and water-dropping airplanes, including many units that had already fought the Orange County blaze earlier in the day, were helpless against the high winds and 5% humidity. They chose, instead, to let brush burn while stacking their defenses around a series of mountain enclaves on Malibu and Corral canyons.

Actress Shirley MacLaine, after packing her car on Old Malibu Road in preparation for an evacuation said: “I think they ought to change the area code and make it 911.”

At 3:45 p.m., with the fire a quarter of a mile away, Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies drove through the Malibu Bowl enclave. “The fire is imminent,” they announced. “Please evacuate.”

Mark Dantoni, 42, his wife, Elizabeth, and their 8-year-old son, David, frantically filled the family Volvo station wagon and a pickup truck.

“We got the pictures,” Mark Dantoni said, panting with exertion. “We got the computers. We got the TV. We’ve got art. This is the second time we had to do this. We did it in ’93.”

In Stokes Canyon, Rick Singer ignored warnings from his wife and 12-year-old daughter to flee and helped fight the fire. He was soon joined by firefighters, whom he praised for their quick work. But it was a rooftop sprinkler system that helped save the bulk of the home, after one corner caught fire, he said.

At Pepperdine University, some horse stables were lost but the stucco and red-tiled-roof structures that make up the campus appeared to be spared, with firefighters at one point holding off flames that skipped right to the edge of a faculty housing complex.

Alyssa Thomas, 27, a law student at Pepperdine, was studying at the campus law library when she looked out the window to see bright orange flames jumping over a ridge. Minutes later, about 4:30 p.m., the library went dark. Outside there was pandemonium: students running from their dorms, computers in hand and clothes slung over their backs.

The thick, noxious smoke nearly blinded her and the others.

“It almost pitch black,” Thomas said. “It was like the movie ‘Twister.’ The embers were falling. The tree limbs were flying. It was so windy up there. . . . It was like the middle of being in the middle of some kind of war zone.”

Times staff writers Thao Hua, Eric Malnic, Tina Nguyen, Tony Perry, David Reyes, H.G. Reza, Lisa Richardson, Julie Tamaki, Renee Tawa and Eric Malnic, and special correspondents Bonnie Hayes, John Canalis, Mimi Ko Cruz, Hope Hamashige and Lesley Wright contributed to this report.

The Full Story

* LAGUNA REMEMBERS: Laguna Beach residents sense a similarity to that day three years ago when their city burned. A12

* BUCOLIC COMMUNITY: Many say Lemon Heights, a small region of winding roads, has preserved the feel of O.C.’s rural past. A13

* PREVENTIVE MEASURES: O.C. tightens restrictions on roofing, while some question policy of building in fire-prone areas. A14

* BLOWN AROUND: Winds cut power to 56,000 Edison customers in O.C. and presented extra challenges to motorists. B1

* RELATED STORIES, PHOTOS, GRAPHICS: A12-17, B1, B8

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Path of the Inferno

Driven by 40- to 45-mph winds gusting into the 80s, the Lemon Heights fire destroyed and damaged homes and other buildings in a 2-square-mile area, laying waste to Afton Lane. How the fire unfolded:

1. Tree blows down, snaps power lines and ignites nearby vegetation around 9 a.m.

2. Swirling embers reach first home, setting it aflame

3. Southwesterly winds blow sparks, set off three others

4. Fire continues downhill, guts four homes on Afton Lane

5. Last house burns, beyond containment line

****

Fire Facts

* 33 structures burned

* 10 homes destroyed

* 17 roof fires include two with at least 50% damage

* 4 miscellaneous outbuildings burned

* Fire out at 8 p.m.