Blaze Forces People to Flee Homes

About 200 ocean-view homes were voluntarily evacuated Wednesday afternoon when a brush fire raced through a network of small canyons in Rancho Palos Verdes, authorities said.

No houses were damaged and only one injury was reported; one woman was overcome by smoke.

By nightfall, the blaze had burned at least 100 acres, fire officials said. Residents were allowed to return to their homes later in the evening.

Upscale houses in the Island View subdivision, on a slope about a mile from the ocean, were briefly threatened.

The flames, one eyewitness said, flared as high as 20 feet. A large plume of smoke, flattened beneath a marine layer of fog and drifting eastward, was visible in much of the Los Angeles Basin.

By evening, 375 firefighters from Los Angeles and Orange counties, assisted by five water-dropping helicopters, had largely contained the blaze, according to L.A. County Fire Capt. Mark Savage.

“A big factor in the success of this firefight was the adequate brush clearance that the residents provided the firefighters,” he said. “Another advantage was that this did not occur in the heat of the day, which would have made it burn more aggressively.”

Evacuation centers were opened at St. John Fisher Catholic School and Rancho Palos Verdes City Hall. Firefighters prepared to spend the night tending the burned area, where several small fires continued to burn at nightfall.

Some residents resisted leaving. Susan Shultz, 44, remained at her home on Santa Catalina Drive even after family members had gathered photo albums, passports and birth certificates and taken them to safety at her in-laws’ house. Especially emotionally difficult, she said, was having to carry away her 18-year-old daughter Kellie’s birthday gifts.

“I’m upset this is on her birthday,” Shultz said, “and she had to eat dinner at Burger King.”