Brush Fire Gives L.A. a Bad Air Day

Take the worst of Southern California’s smoggy stew and add smoke--lots of it--from a stubborn brush fire. Cap it under a lid of hot air, crank the heat to sweltering and what you get, suffering residents discovered Wednesday, is a flat-out miserable day to own a pair of lungs.

As firefighters appeared to gain the upper hand over a blaze in the remote reaches of the Angeles National Forest near Azusa, the fire’s wide-reaching pall of smoke prompted air quality officials to issue an unusual smoke warning, advising residents from San Bernardino County to the San Fernando Valley to stay indoors as much as possible and avoid rigorous outdoor activities.

Most people seemed to be heeding the advice on a day when temperatures hit the mid-80s in the morning and hovered around 100 degrees in some areas throughout the day.

“I don’t know if it’s dangerous, but it’s hard to breathe. It’s so dirty,” Socorro Urenda said in Spanish as her two children played on a jungle gym at a Duarte park. Urenda, who had driven from Glendora, said she was cutting the visit short.

The sprawling cloud spurred nervous residents as far away as South-Central Los Angeles and Newhall to call authorities to report the smell of smoke in their neighborhoods.

Authorities shut down access to the Chantry Flats picnic area just north of Arcadia because of the smoky conditions and left closed San Gabriel Canyon Road, a heavily traveled forest corridor near where the fire began Tuesday afternoon. Officials expect to reopen the popular picnic site and road in time for the July Fourth holiday weekend.

Parks and jogging trails in San Gabriel Valley foothill communities were all but deserted, and some gyms were busier than normal. Those braving the sooty conditions squinted through a mustard-brown veil that obscured the nearby mountains and moved many motorists to turn on their headlights for the morning drive.

When the mountainous tinderbox ignited above Azusa on Tuesday, it gave residents who live within view a kind of early fireworks show. Families pulled out lawn chairs, and stroller-pushing parents gathered on the sidewalks near the mouth of San Gabriel Canyon, creating a festive air as helicopters dropped water on the twinkling hillsides.

But the party gave way Wednesday morning to what could best be described as an atmospheric hangover as residents even miles away awakened to a dusting of ash on their cars and the pungent smell of smoke in their homes.

“It was like the fireplace had been going and my husband forgot to open the damper,” said Pat Williams, who lives nearly 10 miles away in Temple City.

By afternoon, Williams had fled her smoky house in favor of a discount store in Azusa. But she was still nursing a cough caused by the smoke--another insult added to injury for residents like her throughout the San Gabriel Valley, where brutal heat and heavy smog are common on even the best of summer days.

“I’m going inside,” said Leon Allor, finishing an abbreviated round of golf with friends at the Rancho Duarte Golf Course in Duarte. “We’re all ex-smokers, and here we’re all inhaling this.”

It was those pollutants that prompted officials at the South Coast Air Quality Management District to issue the advisory declaring air “unhealthful” throughout a broad swath of the region. The warning, unusual for its sweep, centered on the tiny particles contained in the smoke that can lodge in the lungs and windpipe, exacerbating breathing disorders such as asthma.

That form of pollution was projected to exceed federal standards in the advisory area. Adding to the expanse of smoke was a smaller brush fire near Sylmar that charred 80 acres but was contained by Wednesday morning.

Part of the blame rested with unusually still air and a summertime inversion layer--a cap of hot air clamped tight over the area and leaving no escape route for the smoke.

“We seldom have fires like this, where the air gets so still in the morning that the smoke builds up like this,” said Mike McCorison, an air quality specialist at the Angeles National Forest.

Fire officials said the thick smoke was hindering their aerial assault on flames that since Tuesday had crawled through the rugged canyons north of Azusa. The blaze, estimated to have burned 1,300 to 1,500 acres, was declared 50% contained by Wednesday evening. The fire was started when a resident clearing brush near his home accidentally caused a spark that ignited the tinder. The blaze, which destroyed one house and two outbuildings, was moving late Wednesday deeper into the forest near San Gabriel Canyon and away from homes.

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Because of the hostile terrain, the 800 firefighters summoned to the blaze were relying heavily on 11 helicopters and seven air tankers.

“We have steep terrain and no access. That’s a problem,” said Linda Christman, spokeswoman for the U.S. Forest Service.

Officials used the occasion to remind forest visitors about the dangerous potential for blazes and warned against bringing fireworks for the weekend. Firefighters will hand out leaflets on how to prevent fires.

“Southern California is a tinderbox,” said forest supervisor Mike Rogers.

Fire departments throughout the San Gabriel Valley were fielding calls from residents concerned that the smoke might mean that the fire was approaching their homes.

“We’re two canyons away, but we get calls from concerned citizens,” said Barbara Counsil, secretary for Pasadena’s fire marshal. “If [people] are working in Los Angeles, they have no idea where the fire is. They just know they can’t see the mountains, and they call their local fire department.”

For some longtime residents, the smoky invasion evoked memories of the worst of Southern California smog more than two decades ago.

But the truly hardened shrugged off the smoke as but another airborne annoyance--no worse, they said, than the usual hazy, steamy conditions that define summertime in the San Gabriel Valley.

Azusa resident Stan Hughes ignored the hazard and pedaled his bicycle to the mouth of the San Gabriel Canyon for a better view of the helicopter sorties.

“We’re just used to it here,” said Hughes, 34. “It looks pretty bad in the afternoon anyway.”

At the Rancho Duarte Golf Course, not far from where flames licked the crown of a hill the previous evening, Jim Mills laced up his golf shoes and gazed into the soupy sky. “It’s very bad--one of the worst I’ve seen.”

But he was nonetheless bound for the links.

“I’ve been in hailstorms and still played,” Mills said. “This just makes it more challenging.”

Time staff writer Joe Mozingo contributed to this report.