Foothills Fire Lets O.C. Off Easy

A fast-moving fire started by someone salvaging copper wire burned more than 5,200 acres of eastern Orange County on Tuesday but spared thousands of foothill homes when a combination of luck, wind direction and intense firefighting pushed the blaze away from heavily populated areas.

Fanned by winds gusting to 100 mph, the flames roared through a sparsely populated area just west of Cleveland National Forest, from Baker Canyon toward Irvine Lake, Fremont Canyon and Irvine Regional Park. But the fire only burned two structures, both in Baker Canyon--a small home and an outbuilding. A family of four was briefly trapped in the house, but firefighters rescued them shortly after midnight, about an hour after the blaze began, said Elaine Gray of the Orange County Fire Authority.

No injuries were reported. Santiago Canyon Road was strewn with possums, rats, brown rabbits and rattlesnakes, some of which had been run over, others who had died of smoke inhalation.

The fire started near Black Star and Baker Canyon roads in a steel container, larger than a dumpster, where someone had set ablaze a pile of insulated copper wire. Apparently the person was attempting to salvage the copper for resale, Battalion Chief Dan Runnestrand said.

No one had been arrested last night, but authorities wanted to talk to the owner of the property.

The fire was expected to burn throughout the night, but firefighters hope it would be contained without burning any more acreage. No homes were threatened as of late Tuesday night. Crews planned to fight the blaze from the ground overnight and to resume the air assault about 6:30 a.m. today.

The fire forced 11 schools in and around Irvine, Tustin and Orange to close. Several busy roads were closed for much of the day. With erratic winds blowing the fire from one direction to another, county officials declared a state of emergency in midafternoon, making the county eligible for federal and state assistance.

People in five residential communities near the fire--Cowan Heights, Lemon Heights, Tustin Ranch, Peters Canyon and the Northwood area of Irvine--waited nervously with bags packed throughout the day after firefighters and Orange County sheriff’s deputies warned they might need to evacuate. Some residents of nearby Orange Park Acres also packed to go.

Sid Rowland was working the graveyard shift at a trucking company in Santa Ana when he was called by a friend who saw coverage of the fire on television.

“He said, ‘Sid, if your house isn’t on fire right now, it could be soon,’ ” said Rowland, 42, who rushed home, convincing a police officer to let him through a roadblock.

But aside from a few charred shrubs and a melted rubber tire swing, his property was spared.

As the fire blazed, water-dropping helicopters and airplanes loaded with fire retardant roared through the smoky skies. Ash rained on people and property throughout the county, traffic inched along on roads jammed with traffic detoured because of the fire, and an amber band of smoke covered a broad expanse of otherwise startlingly blue sky.

Throughout the day firefighters faced conditions ripe for a fire: temperatures of 95 degrees, 16% relative humidity and Santa Ana winds. Winds were expected to ease slightly overnight, with forecasts of 15- to 25-mph winds below the passes and canyons and temperatures in the 80s.

Fire officials said Tuesday evening that the winds had subsided slightly, allowing firefighters to contain the blaze.

“We’re crossing our fingers a little bit,” he said.

Nearly 700 firefighters from as far away as Ventura County battled the blaze, which was roughly bounded on the west, south and north by the proposed route of the Eastern Transportation Corridor, with Irvine Lake on the fire’s northeast edge, fire authority officials said.

In Tustin, across Jamboree Road from the fire, workers at the 50-acre Pacific Coast Nursery Inc. had an empty van at the ready to carry key documents and office equipment in case the fire came near, and a 2,000-gallon water truck ready for battle.

But hundreds of plants and trees--some weighing up to five tons and valued as much as $5,000 apiece--would have been left behind.

“It would be a devastating loss,” Adams said of his stock of cedars, oaks, jacarandas, magnolias, ficus and 118 giant birds of paradise bound for Disneyland.

When he arrived at 7 a.m., Adams said, the smoke was so heavy “you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. . . . As I drove up, it was like I entered this surreal zone. It was really kind of eerie.”

By noon, the wind had changed direction and the nursery appeared spared.

After starting in Baker Canyon, Shell said, the fire moved southwest toward Silverado Canyon before the wind shifted direction about midday. That’s when the fire began moving toward Fremont Canyon and Irvine Park. By midafternoon, staff at the Orange County Zoo in Irvine Park were preparing to evacuate animals from their pens. It never became necessary.

Fire Battalion Chief Mike Rohde said the blaze at first closely followed the path of the 1967 Paseo Grande fire, which destroyed 66 homes and 50,000 acres in Lemon Heights and the surrounding area. But while firefighters had hoped that knowing the path that blaze took would help predict the route of Tuesday’s fire, Rohde said, quickly changing afternoon winds foiled those attempts.

“The wind today is so erratic that that’s what we’re up against,” he said, scanning an aerial map of the 1967 fire.

When flames licked close to the under-construction Eastern Transportation Corridor, the newly graded ground served as a fire break that blocked the blaze from jumping into tracts of new homes on the other side of the highway, Gray said.

About 35% of the blaze was encircled by firefighters and 15% had been put out by night.

“Firefighters are taking a beating because of the heat and the terrain and the wind,” Shell said. “Any time you fight Mother Nature you gotta put your heart and soul into it, and unfortunately we don’t often beat Mother Nature. But we’re doing the best we can.”

Firefighters efforts early Tuesday morning were hampered by the dark of night that prevented the aircraft from being deployed until morning and limited movement into the burning brush. Firefighters used Santiago Canyon Road as a staging area, shooting water from high-powered hoses in all directions.

At daybreak, tankers and helicopters with giant wanter buckets from the California Department of Forestry were dispatched to the blaze, and eventually 13 aircraft were used in efforts to douse the fire.

While ground crews were sent to the fire’s center and its perimeter, air tankers loaded with fire retardant laid down thick ribbons of the red chemicals on steep canyons nearly inaccessible on foot.

Helicopters hovered over Lake Irvine and scooped 360 gallons of water at a time before heading off to dump it on the fire, and each plane dumped 2,000 gallons of fire retardant on the blaze per trip.

The changing winds, thick clouds of smoke and power lines made flying risky as pilots radioed their positions and gave warnings to each other and to a helicopter command official keeping track of air traffic.

With smoke filling the air and ash fluttering onto pavement as far away as Seal Beach, 11 public schools closed for the day, with students complaining of burning eyes. The school closures inconvenienced thousands of parents and students. Many took to the telephones as early as 7 a.m. to spread the news.

“Basically, everybody called everybody else, and the word was out,” said Sue Kuwabara, whose son attends Sierra Vista Middle School in Irvine.

Ten schools were expected to reopen today. It was unclear Tuesday whether Silverado Elementary School would reopen today.

Three of the closed schools became shelters for people affected by the fire. But Red Cross officials said the shelters were scarcely used, since no one was evacuated.

Irvine Regional Park, Peters Canyon Park, Santiago Oaks Park and Whiting Ranch, all county parks, will be closed until further notice.

Near the edges of the blaze a thick dust of ash fell.

That wasn’t good for business at Johnson Brothers Pumpkin Patch, on Jamboree Road and Irvine Boulevard in Tustin.

“It was just all falling down out of the sky,” owner Danny Johnson said.

Johnson, who sleeps in a trailer on the lot, spent the night nervously watching the fire’s progress, and said that at times the smell was overpowering.

Dale Shanahan, parked along Santiago Canyon Road near Orange Park Acres with his horse trailer and waited for horse owners who needed help transporting their horses to safety.

Shanahan said many horse owners in Orange Park Acres were taking their animals to Sully-Miller Equestrian Center, where they would be tied up in an arena with the sprinklers turned on.

“I’ll pull as many as I can to help these folks out,” Shanahan said.

Also contributing to this report were Times staff writers Scott Martelle, Nick Anderson, Marcida Dodson and Tina Nguyen and correspondents Mimi Ko Cruz and John Canalis.

More Fire Coverage:

* Residents in threatened areas packed the essentials and prayed they wouldn’t have to go. A14.

* Parent notification of school closures went smoothly thanks to informal networking. A14

* Lessons from past disasters played key roles in helping personnel fight the blaze. A15

* All that ash is irritating, but not harmful to most people. A15

* How the mix of weather conditions helped fuel the fire. A15

* What you should and shouldn’t do to fireproof your home. A15