Christmas Tree Blaze Kills Woman

Every year around Halloween, Linda Sartor began to decorate. By December, her West Hills home was transformed into a winter wonderland, complete with a trio of grinning wire snowmen on her lawn, an intricate porcelain Christmas village lining the shelves of her family room and three or four artificial trees in various rooms.

This year, as an added flourish, she dressed the seven trees outside in hundreds of feet of colorful lights.

But two weeks after Christmas, authorities said, her holiday spirit cost her her life. An electrical short from a string of Christmas lights on an indoor tree set the house afire early Friday, killing the 50-year-old woman.

As friends, neighbors and relatives picked through the rubble, they recalled a warm and caring woman who took special delight in filling her home with holiday knickknacks of every variety.

“[She] had the little doll house of the block,” said Jean Zoida, who lived across the street.

But firefighters used the tragedy to warn others to put away their Christmas trappings.

“Christmas is over now,” said Los Angeles Fire Department Capt. Steve Ruda. “We’re encouraging everybody to take their trees out of their homes, unplug their Christmas lights. Put them away for the season.”

*

Firefighters arrived around 4 a.m., after being alerted by a security firm that a smoke alarm had gone off. They controlled the blaze in 20 minutes, but it was too late for Sartor, a single woman who lived alone. Firefighters found her body not far from the fake tree in the family room believed to have started the blaze.

“There was really not much the firefighters could do,” Ruda said.

Neighbors said the woman they affectionately called “DeDe” usually kept her ornaments and lights up for weeks after the holiday season passed.

“It takes her a long time to put them up,” said Zoida. “She likes to enjoy it for a couple months.”

Beginning in November, neighbors would begin clamoring with Sartor for a sneak peek at her decorations.

She would always refuse until she was finished. But when she finally ushered them in, visitors were met with an impressive sight.

“It was the showplace of the neighborhood,” said Elena Guglielmi, Sartor’s younger sister, who worked with Sartor in a property management company owned by the family.

This year, neighbors said, Sartor had gone to added decorative extremes in arranging the lights around her home. Rather than the usual two or three, she draped all seven trees in her yard with lights, causing what neighbors believe was a tremendous strain on her electrical wiring system.

“It was like Disneyland,” said neighbor Michelle Slaubert.

Even amid the blackened walls and charred furniture, the pride and care Sartor took in her home was evident.

Standing mournfully next to the front door was a lone plastic tree. Hanging from the melted limbs were dozens of miniature ornaments, each intricately crafted.

There were the pair of tiny mice on top of a Hershey’s Cocoa can; the small bag labeled “North Pole Reindeer Feed”; the stuffed teddy bears that lay underneath.

*

A few steps away, Sartor’s sister gingerly picked off the floor a statue of the biblical figure Joseph, which had fallen from a shelf during the blaze, knocking its head off. Still on the shelf, which had somehow survived the fire largely intact, was Mary and one of the wise men peering over her shoulder, right where Sartor had carefully placed them.

Neighbors agreed, as they sat on her patio, clutching ornaments and their memories, that Sartor had died in her own version of paradise.

“Her house, her yard, her garden . . . that was her heaven,” said one.

They all nodded in agreement.

*

FIRE KILLS 3 IN ORANGE

A woman and her two young children die when smoke from kitchen blaze fills home. B11