Ventura Residents Breathe Sigh of Relief as Blaze Dies Down

Firefighters had all but stamped out a wind-whipped blaze Saturday evening that had threatened dozens of homes, forced scores of evacuations and blackened 360 acres in the hills above City Hall before rain and a shift in wind helped stop it in its tracks.

But officials were bracing for a new onslaught of gusts that they feared could reignite the flames, which Friday night surged through decades-old brush and charred the home-studded hills rising above the city’s skyline.

Fire officials continued to hunt for clues and suspects in the deliberately set fire, which was fully contained by Saturday afternoon and expected to be extinguished by noon today.

At the fire’s peak, 800 firefighters from 16 agencies battled the blaze. Two firefighters suffered minor knee injuries on the fire line.

While no homes were lost Friday night, fire officials said the blaze had the potential to do a lot of damage.

“It was a wind-driven fire, and we were definitely concerned it could go all the way to Santa Paula,” said Capt. Kelly Richeson of the Ventura County Fire Department. “But the rain really helped us out [Friday] night. Unfortunately, we’re not out of the woods yet.”

Ventura Mayor Jack Tingstrom, who held a City Hall news conference Saturday morning to praise fire crews, said he hoped the flames would be put out before winds could pick up again.

“We’re all feeling very lucky this morning,” said Tingstrom, noting that the blaze has cost the city $350,000. “We were lucky to have a little rain, which helped immensely. I’m going to church tomorrow, because thank God it rained.”

Ventura’s hillside dwellers awoke Saturday morning to a cold wind that blasted a fine rain of black ash over intact houses.

They looked out over scorched hills, where the flames had stopped--at the edge of the 100-foot buffer zone created by county-mandated weed clearance.

And they marveled that the fire had claimed no homes and no lives.

“It was pretty amazing,” said Gay Conroy, surveying her blackened property line on Gilliard Lane. “We just bought this house three months ago and have been doing extensive remodeling, and it was, like, ‘Naw, God’s not going to do this to us.’ Fortunately, part of the remodeling was cutting down a bunch of pine trees on the ridge here, and if we hadn’t, that could have gotten really ugly.”

Just downhill, Don Greene had driven his vintage Jaguars back to his garage after moving them out Friday night and was buffing the ash off his Porsche late Saturday morning as the winds died.

While his neighbors on Pacific View Lane had evacuated the night before, Greene stayed behind, hosing down their houses.

“I thank the neighbors for the use of their pool,” Greene said jovially.

“It was really scary,” he said. “But the firefighters were great.”

Just as things looked the worst, he said, firefighters stretched hoses into position, the winds began to die, and the rains came.

At that moment, homeowners on Mint Lane began to rejoice, said Melinda Norcott, who had watched anxiously as flames roared up the ridge across the street from her house.

“It was great when it started raining,” she said. “We were jumping up and down and hugging each other and going, ‘Rain! Rain!’ ”

Fred Alvarez and Mack Reed are Times staff writers. David R. Baker is a Times correspondent. In addition, correspondent Kate Folmar contributed to this story.