Crews Keep Battling Stubborn Malibu Blaze; 6 Firefighters Hurt

Six firefighters were hurt Tuesday as wildfires roared for a second day across Malibu and parts of San Diego County, and officials declared that the most devastating of the blazes was of “suspicious” origin.

Fire crews were scrambling to expand their partial containment of the two largest in a series of brush fires that swept Southern California--hoping to work faster than the Santa Ana winds that were forecast to intensify later in the week.

On a day that dawned with ashen, sepia skies, rescue crews and wary residents from Carlsbad to Point Dume were drawing a clearer picture of the damage and the challenges ahead:

* Six firefighters from the city of Los Angeles and Glendale were injured when their truck was overrun by a quickly shifting hot spot near Corral Canyon in Malibu. They had been protecting homes in Malibu’s Corral Canyon when the flames overtook them. All were helicoptered to hospitals, where one was reported seriously burned over most of his body and another faced surgery. Colleagues on the lines fought back tears as the most seriously injured was wrapped from head to toe in white sheets, fitted with an oxygen mask and shuttled away.

* In San Diego County, officials said the fire that burned 76 homes late Monday or early Tuesday, mostly in the tony La Costa section of Carlsbad, was being investigated as a possible arson. In and around the community best known for its upscale Resort & Spa, 60 homes worth an estimated $24 million were lost as the county suffered its most disastrous fire in history.

* In Malibu, five homes, a trailer and many sheds and outbuildings were lost, although fate, nature and solid preparation appeared to have staved off heavier losses, at least for a time. Fire officials said that even with moderate weather it would take two or three days to completely control the fire. The inferno appeared to have been caused by power lines that arced into a eucalyptus tree.

* Gov. Pete Wilson declared a state of emergency in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties and called on President Clinton to declare a major disaster in all three counties because of the firestorms. Wilson’s action permits the marshaling of more state forces and allows local governments to recoup their heavy fire costs.

* The soot-filled skies were not the only cloud still hanging over the fire zones, as forecasters predicted high winds and temperatures by the weekend after a possible respite of milder weather Friday. Fire officials in Malibu worried that if they do not beat the wind, it could turn the fire toward the populous enclave of Point Dume.

More than anything, Tuesday was a day of returning: residents returning to charred remnants or merely smoky homes, and firefighters returning to another difficult day on the lines.

Malibu:

In Malibu, there was almost a giddy sense of relief in the acrid air Tuesday, tempered by sadness over the injuries of the six firefighters.

The four Los Angeles and two Glendale firefighters were on home-protection duty, clearing a fire line off Newell and Corral Canyon roads when the wind suddenly threw fire back at them about 1:10 p.m.

“The fire just took off on them,” said Los Angeles County Fire Detective Robert Evans. “It just overran them.”

One of the Glendale firefighters sustained lung damage and second- and third-degree burns over 70% of his body and was being treated at Sherman Oaks Hospital’s Grossman Burn Center. A Los Angeles fireman was also in serious condition with burns on his hands and arms, while another Glendale firefighter was in fair condition with superficial burns that might require surgery.

At the burn center, a dozen tearful friends and relatives of the injured Glendale firefighters held hands and prayed in a waiting room.

The three other members of the Los Angeles City Fire Department suffered lesser injuries and were released later in the afternoon from UCLA Medcial Center.

Five other firefighters had been injured a day before, including Long Beach fireman Don Parkins, who hurt his neck when his engine lost its brakes and hurtled into several cars near Winding Way in Malibu late Monday.

Just moments before, Parkins and his company had helped save a half-dozen homes along the rural road near Malibu’s Paradise Cove.

Residents up and down Corral Canyon Road on Tuesday shared stories from the night before, cleaned up what they could and tried to chart the fire’s progress. Neighbors who hadn’t spoken in weeks shook hands, embraced and reintroduced themselves as they recalled their shared ordeal.

“While we’re standing on this field, to the left of us there was another fire, coming over the ridge,” said Michael Taylor, 36, a general contractor and nine-year resident. Looking at a group of houses that were spared any damage, he said, “I can’t believe none of them went up.”

Others continued to marvel at their own ingenuity and stubbornness, voicing the community’s now trademark refusal to back down from a long history of fires and mudslides.

Along Winding Way, Anthony O’Rourke praised his investment in landscaping and a $1,000 pump, along with the kindness of nature, for seeing his two-story home through the night.

Said O’Rourke: “The winds have been kind to Winding Way tonight.”

While most residents were praising themselves for their preparations, government officials couldn’t report an entirely clean slate.

The Los Angeles city Recreation and Parks Department failed to clear dangerous brush along 45 miles of streets and hiking trails, despite Fire Department requests to do so, according to a city report. The fire-prone brush remains uncleared in four dozen parcels of hillside parkland from the San Fernando Valley to Griffith Park, the report said.

Park officials blamed lack of funds for the problem, although they did not receive a sympathetic hearing for their complaints from a City Council committee Monday.

San Diego County:

While an investigation continued, Tom O’Keefe, division chief for the California Department of Forestry, said the northern San Diego County fire was of “suspicious origin.”

The Harmony Grove-Elfin Forest, where the blaze began, has been an arson target in the past, including one fire this summer that was set 100 feet from the origin of Monday’s blaze, officials said.

Those burned out of homes in La Costa and San Marcos told tales of horror from the night before: showers of burning embers, homes and trees bursting into flames, pets trapped inside burning homes, the terrifying hum of the gusting wind and the gunfire-like explosion of windows.

Pam and Nina Pamer, retirees from Cleveland, stood before the smoldering ruin of their La Costa dream home and talked about family treasures lost and lessons learned about living in Southern California’s fire zone.

“The advice I’ll give people is to have all your papers in order and be ready to leave at a moment’s notice,” Nina Pamer said. “And never, never have a shake roof.”

In San Marcos, Lois Dunlop, 75, returned to what was left of the home she had fled just hours earlier. She had thought she would be safe but suddenly the wind shifted in the hours after midnight and sent a wall of flame racing toward the three-bedroom home nestled in an orange grove.

“It wasn’t all that great-big,” Dunlop said softly, “but it was my home.”

Dunlop and her husband had not even had enough time to save their most prized mementos--pictures from 1940 and baby pictures of their two grown children. In the confusion, the family cat disappeared.

“She’ll probably never get over this,” John Kean, the Dunlops’ son, said of his mother.

John Isbell, a technician with Pacific Bell, said of the devastation in Elfin Forest: “It looks liked a nuclear wasteland.”

“Your first reaction when you’re with people who have lost their homes is heartbreak,” said Gov. Pete Wilson after touring La Costa. His voice subdued, he noted the incongruity of Southern California fires driven by warm Santa Ana winds. “You look around today, and you see this glorious weather,” Wilson said. “It’s glorious, unless you’re a firefighter.”

Wilson told of a teenage boy in La Costa who dashed into a burning house to save his sister’s prized cheerleader’s outfit. Wilson’s staffers identified the family as Bob and Margaret Anne Lozuk and their 16-year-old twins Rob and Kristi Lozuk.

“You see such tremendous courage on the part of people, and you see these disasters bringing out the best in people’s neighbors and in total strangers,” Wilson said. “Remarkable kindness and generosity and courage.”

Firefighters, some with 20 or more years’ experience, said they had never seen a fire so fast and so erratic, moving one way and then shifting to another, burning some homes and skipping others.

“We made a stand on this one house, and damn if we didn’t save it,” said San Diego firefighter Tim Thorpe, who was dispatched to the Elfin Forest. “But it was incredible. The fire traveled a quarter of a mile in about five minutes and had to be 60 feet high.”

The fire’s origin, east of La Costa, is in the middle of horse country, and at least 235 horses had to be evacuated to Horse Park, a state-run equestrian center in Del Mar.

Pam Johnson, a nurse, Del Mar resident and thoroughbred owner, said the most ominous moment came when she drove to Woodridge Stables to remove her horse and saw “fire licking the barn and heard the horses screaming.”

The north county inferno was actually a dozen or more fires ignited by blowing embers from the initial blaze east of La Costa.

Unlike other fire-prone coastal areas of Southern California, La Costa had never seen a brush fire like the one that roared westward Monday. The fire killed the community’s sense of “it can’t happen here.”

“At one point, the flames were 50 to 70 feet high and just jumping from ridge to ridge,” said Belina Petty, 48, a securities operations manager whose home was damaged but not destroyed. “It was surreal.”

Traffic became quickly clogged as residents fled.

“The woman next to me was honking her horn furiously for no reason, as if that would help,” Petty said. “She was totally freaked out, completely panicked. We saw no police, no fire units and heard nothing on the radio. I couldn’t believe what was happening.”

Carlsbad Mayor Bud Lewis said city officials were first notified of the wildfire Monday at 5 p.m.

“They [fire department officials] said they could handle it--but it kept escalating,” Lewis said Tuesday. “By 6 p.m., all hell had broken lose. By 6:30, we called for assistance. We asked for 75 engines, and got 30. There were just too many other fires in Southern California.”

Orange County:

The stunned victims of the community of Lemon Heights took stock of their lives Tuesday, sifting through the rubble of their homes.

The day after the wind-whipped blaze tore through this swath of unincorporated Orange County, fire officials began revising upward their estimates of the damage. The fires, caused by a power line downed by stiff Santa Ana winds, destroyed more than $6 million in property, razing 10 homes and damaging 23 other buildings.

Fire officials were unsure how much of the losses would be covered by insurers.

The quantitative and emotional toll of the fires came together Tuesday in the hardest hit neighborhoods. Residents picked through the remains of their homes, looking for valuables that survived. Strewn across their lawns lay the charred remains of toys, bedsprings, clothes and toiletries.

And along the streets, homeowners walked about in shocked disbelief. “I walked in and cried,” said Lorraine Fairbairn, 45, a school principal who lost her home. “It was a lot worse than I anticipated.”

Gone are most of her clothes, family pictures, the favorite dishes and glasses. Burned are her television, her stereo, videotapes, favorite novels, silver and knickknacks that made the house so warm for five years.

Some residents were able to carry out boxes and bags of things sentimental and mundane. Others lost practically everything.

If a final measure of the continuing uncertainty in the Southland was needed, it was provided by small brush fires that continued to crop up in neighborhoods far removed from the main fronts.

At 2:45 p.m., near the 210 Freeway and the Glendale-Los Angeles border, flames raced up a steep hillside. More than 100 firefighters, assisted by water-carrying helicopters, cut them off before they could reach power lines on the first ridge above the highway. The blaze scorched about 20 acres.

Even that relatively small fire was cause for worry, said Assistant Los Angeles City Fire Chief Jim Young.

“We hope to knock it down in a couple of hours, assuming the winds remain the same,” Young said. “But we expect to baby-sit it all night.”