Brush Fire Jams Traffic

A stolen van that was torched and abandoned in Santiago Canyon sparked a brush fire Monday morning that blackened 30 acres near Irvine Lake, as hot, gusty winds whipped up smoldering embers and scattered them across craggy hillsides.

Hundreds of motorists who use Santiago Canyon Road as a back-country commuter road had to find other routes after it was shut down between Jamboree and Silverado Canyon roads so it could be used as the first line of defense.

The fire was reported shortly after 5 a.m. by someone who used a cell phone to call 911, officials said.

Exit ramps were also closed on the Eastern tollway as fire, police and other emergency crews arrived.

More than 100 firefighters carrying hoses, axes, shovels and chain saws zigzagged their way up steep grades, forming human switchbacks through billowing smoke and breaking up into groups to chase wayward embers.

Three helicopters circled overhead, dousing hot spots with water from nearby Peters Canyon Reservoir. Bulldozers and shovel-toting crews dug trenches to complete the first fire line, with the canyon road serving as the main barrier.

No injuries were reported, and the smoky fire was contained three hours after it began, never leaping past the first fire line.

“This was a very small fire,” said Orange County Fire Capt. Paul Hunter, noting that preparation and prevention kept the fire from raging out of control.

“What we did, and what we do, is throw a lot of resources at the fire early on,” he said.

Initially, fire crews were concerned that the strong, shifting desert winds, blowing between 30 to 40 mph, would fan embers into nearby neighborhoods. They quickly threw up a secondary fire control line.

“We wanted to make sure we had forces downwind so we wouldn’t get a spot fire,” Hunter said. “When you start getting winds this significant, a barrier as wide as the road may not stop the fire.”

Santa Ana winds usually blow strongest during autumn and slow down as Christmas approaches, with areas around Irvine Lake, Bell Canyon, Anaheim Hills and Santa Ana Canyon subject to the worst gusts, said Orange County historian Jim Sleeper, who keeps records dating to the 1870s.

Monday’s winds technically were not Santa Ana winds, because the high pressure system that created them was positioned slightly differently. But the hot weather conditions created by the system feel very similar, said WeatherData meteorologist Amy Talmage.

The winds hit hardest in northern and eastern Orange County, littering streets with debris, as well as keeping firefighters busy in Santiago Canyon.

The blaze began after a Dodge van broke through a cable wire securing the perimeter of the former Santiago Canyon Landfill. The driver parked near the front gate and deliberately set the van afire, Hunter said.

Authorities determined the van had been stolen in Norwalk but had no immediate suspects, Hunter said. He would not elaborate on how investigators determined arson was to blame. But a second vehicle, a Toyota Camry, was found about five miles away, also burned to its shell, and a link was being examined.

“It’s highly suspicious,” Hunter said.

The fire spread north through dense, dry patches of brush along the rugged hills that rise about a mile west of Irvine Lake, and five miles from the Cleveland National Forest in unincorporated Orange.

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Brush Fire

Firefighters extinguished a wind-whipped blaze Monday near Orange.