Arcadia Fire Spares Homes, Burns 750 Acres

As fire rampaged Tuesday across the steep southern face of the San Gabriel Mountains, John Mayberry sat in a lounge chair on the back deck of his Arcadia home, sipping orange juice and watching a blaze that, hours before, had been stopped within a block or so of his property.

The charred evidence of his remarkable good fortune lay before him as he watched firefighters, aided by calm weather, furiously attack the blaze, which authorities suspect was caused by arson or negligence.

If unexpected winds brought the fire back to his home on Canyon Road, Mayberry said, “I’ll get out of my chair, get in my car and leave.” But he didn’t seem worried. This time, it appeared, the residents of Arcadia’s northern panhandle, which juts precariously into the Angeles National Forest, had gotten lucky.

By late Tuesday, the fire had charred 750 acres of the forest north of Arcadia and Sierra Madre but had not damaged a single home. The U.S. Forest Service, which led a 1,000-person force of firefighters from throughout Southern California, said the fire was 50% contained Tuesday night, but wasn’t expected to be entirely contained until Thursday evening.

Forest Service spokeswoman Randi Jorgensen said the blaze appeared to have turned back on itself late Tuesday. Firefighters seemed confident that they could keep control of the blaze as long as winds stayed light. The National Weather Service was forecasting calm conditions into today.

One firefighter hurt his leg Tuesday afternoon and had to be transported by helicopter from a ridge behind the fire lines. His condition was not immediately known. Two other firefighters suffered minor injuries.

The blaze began at 2:45 p.m. Monday in the woods north of Arcadia, just off Santa Anita Canyon Road. The cause was considered suspicious and was under investigation, Los Angeles County Fire Department spokesman Mark Whaling said.

“The reason we think this is that there have been other fires in the same location in the past week,” he said. “Nothing about that location would naturally lend itself to starting a fire.”

The last serious fire in the area was the 1993 Altadena blaze, which destroyed 126 homes. That fire, which was slightly to the west of the current one, was started accidentally by a mentally ill homeless man whose campfire got out of control.

Fire officials said Tuesday that they were concerned about this blaze spreading east to hillsides that have not burned since the mid-1950s and are choked with potentially explosive brush.

Brush in Southern California’s mountains is unusually dry this winter. There has been almost no rain so far this season and warm Santa Ana winds have sucked moisture from the chaparral, leaving it ready to ignite at the slightest spark.

In Orange County, crews Tuesday were still mopping up parts of a fire that began Monday in Trabuco Canyon. Like the Arcadia fire, the 38-acre Trabuco Canyon blaze came close to homes but did not destroy any structures.

Firefighters in and around Arcadia, many of whom had just finished battling a large blaze near Ojai last week, spent the night scrambling up the face of the mountains, at times scaling nearly vertical slopes, to dig firebreaks and clear brush ahead of the flames. Sunrise saw a fleet of five helicopters and four air tankers take to the smoky skies, making repeated runs into the canyons to drop plumes of water and fire retardant on the flames.

Authorities had ordered 260 residents of the homes in greatest danger to evacuate Monday night. Frances Smith, who lives on Canyon Road, said a police officer came to her house about 8 p.m. and knocked on the door.

“We want you to evacuate,” he said.

“How long do we have?” Smith asked.

“Now, just go,” the officer replied.

Smith left, as did others who crowded into the Arcadia Community Center overnight. But some chose to ignore the evacuation order. Joe and Holly Cornet, who got married in October, defied an order to leave their home on Cielo Place. Instead, they got out champagne glasses they had received as wedding presents and champagne they had bought for New Year’s Eve. The two figured, “We might as well enjoy this, because this might be it,” Holly Cornet said. They stayed up, spending a romantic--if risky--night drinking champagne and watching the fire light up the mountains with a bright orange glow.

On Tuesday morning, life went on with an eerie normality in neighborhoods just south of those that were in danger. Garbage trucks made their rounds, newspapers were delivered and homeowners went about their business. Many of those who had evacuated from homes closer to the fire began to return.

Mary Ann McKinley, an executive with Wells Fargo Bank, was huffing by the time she finished the 40-minute walk past roadblocks to her hillside home on Canyon Drive in Arcadia. She had left at 2:30 a.m., four hours after receiving the evacuation order. On the way back home, she chatted knowledgeably about fire breaks, the use of hand crews and other firefighting arcana.

“If you live here in this neighborhood, you have to know about fires,” she said. “Thank God we put a new fire-retardant roof on our house last March.”

When she finally spotted her house, intact but within perhaps 30 feet of the ashes, she paused and wiped her brow. “Oh, they haven’t collected the trash,” she said. “I guess that’s the least of my worries.”

By afternoon, something of a party atmosphere had taken hold in the residential neighborhoods that sit in the shadow of the mountains, and even firefighters were beginning to relax.

“I’m beat,” said Ventura County firefighter Tony McHale, who has worked each of the past eight days, with only a four-hour break from fighting the Ojai fire to spend Christmas Eve with his wife. McHale, a 35-year-old former high school history teacher, lay on the lawn of a home not far from the fire line, snacking on trail mix and reading a book on military history.

On the west side of the fire, in Sierra Madre, Los Angeles city firefighters were eating pomegranates--a gift from grateful homeowners, who also put out patio chairs for the firefighters.

For all their bravado, many residents admitted the fire was terrifying.

“It is spooky to see your house on the news with flames right behind,” said Dan Novac, an engineer whose home borders the foothills. He stood outside it, gazing up at the mountains, where hot spots were still glowing red. “I just couldn’t stay away. I had to come back up to see what was happening,” he said. “It’s exciting, in a strange way.”

Patti White, who lives on Highland Vista Drive, left home at 3 a.m. with her cat, a pile of important papers and a comforter. The fire was closing in on her house as she fled.

“It was really scary, really scary,” she said. “I could see the fire out the front door. But I guess it’s the price you pay for living in the foothills.”

Some people are willing to pay that price. Rose Scott is not. Scott, 70, of Youngstown, Ohio, was staying at her son’s house on Canyon Road when she was evacuated Monday night. She said she was petrified as she stared up at the deep red horizon.

“It will be a long time before we come back here,” she said.

Times staff writers Johnathon Briggs, Mitchell Landsberg, Willoughby Mariano and David Reyes, and special correspondent Richard Winton contributed to this story.