Fire Threatens Canyon Area

A brush fire scorched more than 325 acres in Orange County’s rugged eastern canyon area Tuesday, threatening the community of Modjeska and causing families to flee with horses and belongings.

More than 150 firefighters from throughout the county worked in mid-90-degree heat to fight the blaze as it spread into Cleveland National Forest. Because of the rugged terrain, firefighters relied mostly on air strikes from two water-carrying helicopters and two airplanes that dumped hundreds of gallons of fire retardant on isolated hillsides in the initial stages of the blaze.

On several occasions, as the fire died out in one area near homes in Portola Hills, flames climbed up another slope and headed east into Modjeska Canyon, where residents were advised to evacuate.

“We’ve got high temperatures, high winds and there’s a lot of burnable fuel,” said Capt. Scott Brown, an Orange County Fire Authority spokesman. “Whenever we are working in conditions like this, it’s very dangerous.”

One 28-year-old firefighter suffered heat exhaustion and was in stable condition at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo.

By 8 p.m. Tuesday, the fire had been contained along 40% of its border as it continued to move east away from homes. It had destroyed only one outbuilding.

Firefighters and employees of the U.S. Forestry Service working through the night hoped to have it fully contained by this morning, said Dennis Shell, a spokesman for the county fire authority.

Investigators determined the fire started by accident shortly after 1 p.m., Shell said. A fence-repair crew was working at Country Home Road and Santiago Canyon Road, and a hot exhaust pipe or catalytic converter on their truck touched some dry brush and ignited it, he said.

Initially, the fire was reported as a quarter-acre blaze. Firefighters had to contend with sweltering heat, southeast winds to 12 mph and 36% humidity.

The moist air from the higher-than-normal humidity “helps with combating the fire, but it will make it miserable for the firefighters,” Shell said.

Many residents who heard about the fire while at work rushed home to see a huge cloud of smoke billowing over the area roughly above Cook’s Corner.

“I was on my way back to work from lunch,” said Jeanie Elferding, “and I saw the smoke. When I reached the office, my girlfriend called the sheriffs and they told her the fire was on Santiago Canyon Road near Ridgeline [Road]. My house is only right up the hill. Luckily, it was safe.”

In Modjeska Canyon, Sue Gothold and Paul McIntire anxiously packed important documents and special belongings such as McIntire’s violins into their car and prepared to leave if evacuation became necessary.

“We’ve only been living here two years,” Gothold said. “We haven’t been through this before like other people around here.”

Half an hour later, as they watched flames leap 20 feet and climb a steep hillside with thick oak and scrub for fuel, their worry intensified.

“I’m still cool, but pretty soon I won’t be,” McIntire said.

Meanwhile, many of the couple’s canyon neighbors with livestock hurriedly loaded horses and other animals into vehicles and drove them to safety.

“We’ve been through this before,” said John Howard, 30, a longtime canyon resident. “It’s time to get your possessions out, but I’m not going to panic.”

Howard and another neighbor, Josh Johnston, 16, helped residents load possessions into vehicles and shuttled residents in and out of the canyon in a trailer behind Howard’s all-terrain vehicle.

For the Carter family, whose home is a large geodesic dome toward the mouth of Modjeska Canyon, a phone call from their 11-year-old daughter, Brittney, sounded the alarm to come home.

“One of our neighbors called wondering if we needed help evacuating, and I said, what evacuating?” said Brittney, who was at home alone. She called the office where both her parents work “and I said, ‘Mom, this is kinda an emergency. There’s a fire here, and we got to get out.’ ”

Brittney’s father, Jim Carter, said they were thankful their daughter kept her cool and called them immediately. But, he said, “we live away from where the fire is spreading, and believe we don’t have to evacuate.”

The American Red Cross set up a center for residents who voluntarily evacuated their homes at Foothill High School in Santa Ana.

Brown described the rugged area as one of the county’s “historic” fire corridors.

In August 1994, a fire that began in the same area as Tuesday’s fire burned 180 acres before being stopped about a mile from the Modjeska Canyon Nature Preserve. It also came within one-eighth of a mile of a few homes, but no one was evacuated.

That fire started during a firearms class when sparks from rifle bullets hitting a metal target ignited dry brush.

In October 1993, a fire near San Juan Capistrano burned 15,000 acres of the Cleveland National Forest and 7,500 acres in the adjoining Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park. The eight-day fire destroyed 36 homes and 16 other buildings and caused about $25 million in damage.

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Also contributing to this report was Times staff writer Steve Carney.