Teacher’s ‘Shack,’ a Labor of Love, Is Lost to Blaze

The day after a fire swept up Sloan Canyon in Castaic and burned his cabin to the ground, teacher Phil Scorza appeared to have lost just about everything but his sense of humor--particularly in regard to news reports that his home was a “shack” and “unoccupied.”

“Some people might call it a dump. It was a funky, cockeyed little place--red with a green roof,” Scorza said Tuesday. “Like something you’d put on the front of your Christmas cards.”

Scorza’s cabin was the only home destroyed in the brush fire that by Tuesday had burned more than 2,000 acres in the hills around Castaic.

A teacher of ninth-grade English and video production at Canyon High School in Canyon Country, Scorza produces a public-access cable TV show on local history called “Points of Interest” and is keeper of the photographic archives for the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society. The 2,000 irreplaceable photos--many more than a century old--were not in the cabin. Neither were Scorza and his 16-year-old son, Casey.

“If we had been, we’d be dead,” Scorza said. “When I got home [Monday] starting about a mile below the cabin, the earth was just burned. I was hoping to see green somewhere. The firemen told me it was just a firestorm and there was no way to stop it. They could not get ahead of it.”

Scorza bought the 600-square-foot cabin about four months ago. Since then, he and his son have been making repairs and improvements, including installing a water heater and a new roof.

“I’ll never know if it leaked,” Scorza said.

By Tuesday afternoon, firefighters had contained 85% of the suspicious fire that burned nearly 2,200 acres. In addition to Scorza’s home, which sits on four acres, the fire destroyed an outbuilding, authorities said.

About 850 firefighters from Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties and from San Diego and Santa Barbara manned the fire lines Monday, and 250 remained to monitor the blaze Tuesday night. Two inmate crew members were treated for heat exhaustion at a local hospital and released.

The cause of the fire, which broke out Monday about 12:45 p.m. near Sloan Canyon about one mile west of the Golden State Freeway, remained under investigation Tuesday. Fire officials said the cause was suspicious but had not determined whether it was deliberately set.

“We’re looking very hard at who and what may have started this fire,” said Los Angeles County Fire Inspector Roland Sprewell.

The Sloan Canyon fire was one of the largest so far this year, county Fire Inspector Mike Welch said.

It also comes at a time when Southern California is entering the most dangerous period of its fire season, which runs from May 1 through November. In late summer and early fall, dry brush, hot temperatures and flame-whipping Santa Ana winds heighten fire fears.

“We’re just getting a taste of what other parts of the West have gone through,” Welch said. “We’re still early in the fire season.”

To prepare, firefighters have concentrated on clearing dry brush and urging families to have an evacuation plan, Welch said.

Two Super Scooper airplanes, capable of dropping 1,600 gallons of water, will arrive next week.

As for the teacher with a love of local history, Scorza said he is “depressed and shocked” at the loss of his cabin home, a labor of love he planned to keep forever.

“Still do,” Scorza said. “I’ll rebuild. I want to give it to my son. The history is in the land, and the land always remains.”

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Times staff writer Kristina Sauerwein contributed to this story.