Fire Above Arcadia Threatens Homes

As a wall of fire once again turned hillsides into infernos, racing over tinder-dry brush and threatening homes, firefighters Monday night hunkered down for a nightlong battle against an out-of-control blaze in the mountains above Arcadia.

The flames were first reported in Santa Anita Canyon around 2:45 p.m. and burned up the rugged hill from the road that heads to the Chantry Flats Campground. Residents in about 100 houses around Santa Anita dam were evacuated, as fire drew within a half mile of homes, officials said.

Randi Jorgenson, spokeswoman for the Angeles National Forest, said 283 firefighters were contending with strong, shifting winds that made for a crafty fire--a repeat of the scene last week in Ojai, where a 4,371-acre brush fire destroyed one home and prompted the evacuation of two dozen others. At the same time last week, another brush fire destroyed 524 acres and licked at homes in La Canada Flintridge and Glendale.

In the Arcadia fire, “They had it 40% contained,” Jorgenson said. “But the wind picked up and blew embers over the road. . . . People ask which direction it’s heading. Well, it depends what time.”

Forestry officials feared that Santa Ana winds, which come off the high desert and funnel through the canyons of the San Gabriel Mountains, would blow the fire south toward neighborhoods in the foothills.

“We all have our fingers crossed,” said Laura Luo, a Canyon Road resident, who was asked to gather some belongings and leave her home at 7:30 p.m.

The same gusty wind and tinder-dry conditions that have fueled the fires also stoked a blaze Monday in rustic Trabuco Canyon near Mission Viejo. That fire burned 80 acres and approached a neighborhood before it was contained two hours later. No homes were destroyed.

In the San Gabriel Mountains late Monday night, a fiery ridgeline cast a brilliant orange halo in the night sky as police began to evacuate residents.

Three helicopters were called in to dump water on the blaze, but were called off by nightfall. In the evening, as the flames flared up again, officials called in a special firefighting unit, called a Type 2 Team, because there were insufficient local crews to deal with the flames, according to Gail Wright, another spokeswoman for the Angeles National Forest.

By 10 p.m. 300 acres had burned on the steep slopes of the San Gabriel Mountains, and one firefighter suffered a knee injury. The cause of the fire was under investigation.

Meanwhile, in Ventura County on Monday, fire officials announced that last week’s fire there was caused by two men illegally setting off fireworks. Arrests are pending and the men, both Ojai residents, are expected to face criminal charges, according to authorities.

“We are looking at two male adult suspects for the reckless use of illegal fireworks,” said Joe Luna, a spokesman for the Ventura County Fire Department, which is leading the investigation. “We are looking at possible other charges.” Also on Monday, the Ventura County Board of Supervisors declared the burn region a disaster area. The move paves the way for fire victims to receive disaster assistance funds.

Ventura County Fire Chief Bob Roper said that acres of grazing land and avocado and citrus trees were badly damaged in the fire. Several outbuildings also burned. No cost estimates of the fire damage have been released.

At least five firefighters were injured in the past week as crews fought the fire in the steep, rugged terrain of the Los Padres National Forest.

Nearly 1,500 firefighters were called in from across the state to fight the blaze, which was contained by Sunday. Roper said firefighters hope to extinguish the fire by the end of the week.

As of Monday, about 100 people were still fighting the fire.

By early evening in Trabuco Canyon, along the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains, 100 firefighters aided by water-dumping helicopters had fully contained a fire that had posed a danger to a dozen homes skirting O’Neill Regional Park. As relieved homeowners looked on, fire crews continued to douse hot spots in the 38 acres charred by the flames.

During the height of the blaze, one fixed-wing aircraft borrowed from the California Department of Forestry dropped chemical fire retardants to slow the blaze, while two helicopters dumped tens of thousands of gallons of water.

Despite their apparent victory, firefighters continued to work through the night, using chain saws, rakes and shovels to build a fire break around the scorched brush.

A 100-foot-wide greenbelt of fire-resistant shrubs separating buildings from brushy areas had helped the crews ensure that flames never reached homes, authorities said.

“The community did an outstanding job,” Orange County Fire Authority Engineer Dennis Shell said. “They had lawns, ivies and many different green plants that have a lot of moisture in them. . . . Anything that we can have that is green that we can put between the fire and the structures is a big help to us.”

Investigators had not determined late Monday what caused the blaze, which forced closure of some nearby roads, including southbound El Toro Road at Valley Vista.

Staff writer Peter Hong and correspondent Richard Winton contributed to this report.