Fire That Killed His Sister Blamed on Boy, 3, Playing With a Lighter

It was nearly bedtime Monday in the apartment of Myong and Ku Yi. Nine-year-old daughter Louise was taking a shower. Her 3-year-old brother was already in bed.

But the boy wasn’t sleeping. He was playing with a lighter. Moments later, a spark ignited a blanket and, fire officials said, a blaze quickly swept through the apartment. Louise never made it out of the bathroom, dying the day before her 10th birthday.

As friends and neighbors mourned the girl’s death Tuesday, more than 100 people displaced by the apartment house fire were scrambling to find housing. The blaze caused more than $250,000 in damage, spreading from the Yis’ third-story apartment and damaging as many as 33 other units in the Grand Resort Apartments on South Brookhurst Avenue.

Authorities believe the boy started the fire while playing with a butane lighter used to ignite barbecues and fireplace logs. They said such lighters spark easily and can produce long flames. The boy may have been trying to light a few candles near the bed, fire officials said.

The fire triggered a scene of terror and confusion, as black, acrid smoke quickly filled the complex and neighbors tried to respond to the screams of the girl’s mother. Ku Yi had escaped with her son after burning her hand in an attempt to douse the fire. Louise remained trapped behind a locked bathroom door.

Authorities said the mother reentered the apartment and began pounding on the bathroom door to alert her daughter. But Louise didn’t respond and the door was locked. Meanwhile, the blaze had spread beyond the bedroom.

“The flames became so intense, she was driven out,” Anaheim Battalion Chief Bruce Jacobson said.

Hearing the mother’s cry for help, several neighbors tried unsuccessfully to put out the fire with extinguishers. They didn’t understand that Yi was shouting in Korean for them to save her daughter inside.

“I didn’t know if there was a kid in there,” said neighbor Carlos Ruemmele. “She kept pushing us to get into the apartment.”

Jacobson said that Louise’s body was found in the bathtub and that she probably died of smoke- and heat-related causes. The Orange County coroner’s office has yet to determine an exact cause of death.

Ku Yi was taken to Anaheim Memorial Medical Center, where she was treated and released late Monday. Her son and husband were not injured in the fire.

The Orange County chapter of the American Red Cross said 110 people remained homeless Tuesday night because of the fire. Some were relocated to vacant units in the complex, while others took shelter in nearby hotels, Red Cross spokeswoman Rebecca Long said.

At Low Elementary School, which Louise attended, classmates wept upon hearing the news and drew pictures that they placed on her empty desk. They remembered her as a studious and cheery girl who wrote in her diary every day, wore her hair in a ponytail and liked to play Chinese handball.

Carla Esquivel said Louise also liked making origami figures.

“She was going to make me one,” the girl said. “Now she can’t.”

Times staff writer Daniel Yi contributed to this story.