2 Condos Burn; Fireplace Is Blamed

With temperatures dipping to the 40s early Saturday, Kit Slade and a handful of friends looked forward to burning some logs in her stepmother’s fireplace.

But just before 3 a.m., minutes after trying to ignite the gas outlet in the fireplace, the group had to escape a fire that began burning the living room. No one was injured, but Slade’s three-story condominium and a neighboring unit sustained an estimated $220,000 in damage.

Seven people were left homeless.

A Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman said the cause remains under investigation. Slade and her stepmother believe it was the fireplace.

“We smelled something funny, but it wasn’t gas,” said Slade, 25. “So we turned the gas off and that’s when it went whoosh.”

Carole Slade said her stepdaughter had used the fireplace a week ago without incident. But she surmised a crack in the fireplace gas line could have caused Saturday’s fire.

“It was so seldom used,” she said. “We bought the place three years ago, and we wonder if maybe the [1994 Northridge] earthquake could have caused a problem.”

About 70 firefighters took 27 minutes to subdue the blaze on the 8300 block of Woodley Place, near the Van Nuys Airport, said Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey.

“There’s no roof left,” Carole Slade said after surveying the damage. “You can see into the neighbor’s condo. The wall is completely gone.”

Kit Slade was planning to stay at a friend’s house Saturday night. The American Red Cross was arranging accommodations for others who were left without a place to stay.