Woman Dies in Mobile Home Fire in Ventu Park

A 77-year-old woman was killed Wednesday afternoon in a fire that blazed through her residence in a neighborhood of closely set mobile homes in Ventu Park.

Fire officials said they had not pinpointed a reason for the blaze, but neighbor Mickey North said Blanche Amendola, the victim, was a heavy smoker who usually went outside to light up, except when it was raining.

North, 79, called the Fire Department about 2 p.m. when she noticed flames shooting from the roof of Amendola’s mobile home. The fire was extinguished by about 2:30, said Fire Department spokeswoman Sandi Wells, but fire officials were concerned that flames could spread in the crowded mobile-home park.

“One of the things that was most difficult was protection on either side, even though it’s raining intensely,” Wells said.

North said she and a maintenance man tried to rescue Amendola, but her doors and windows were locked and it was impossible to get in.

“The fire was so hot,” she said. “The whole thing was engulfed.”

Pressure from the blaze blew out a window of neighbor Mary Opfer, 79, who complained of chest pains after the incident, said Deputy Eric Buschow of the Sheriff’s Department. She was taken to Los Robles Regional Medical Center.

In the neighborhood of trailers where many people have lived for decades, Amendola was something of a stranger, neighbors said. She had lived in the park--populated largely by elderly widows--for only six months, and was often seen standing outside her home with a cigarette in her hand.

Amendola--who was closer to North than to anyone else in the park, North said--was fiercely independent, despite her frailty and osteoporosis and ended their daily phone conversations with a saucy “Ciao, babe.”

Amendola was proud of her self-sufficiency, North said.

“I couldn’t take her anywhere. She’d always take a cab,” North said. “That was her social activity. She knew every cabdriver in the city.”

North said that if it hadn’t been raining, Amendola most likely would have smoked outside as usual.

“She couldn’t have weighed more than 70 pounds, and on a day like today she wouldn’t come out and smoke,” North said. “This is terrible.”

Some in the neighborhood said they would try to be more vigilant about fires, especially since many of them don’t have fire extinguishers.

Helena Carroll, an 11-year park resident, vowed to fix her smoke detector, which she had disabled because it went off when she was cooking.

“I can’t believe how badly [the trailer] burned,” she said. “That’s sad.”