Fire damages home on La Mirada in Laguna Beach

Joey Sammut was enjoying the sunset at his Laguna Beach home when he heard a noise.

“‘Whose car alarm is this?’ Sammut said he thought to himself the night of March 10. “It was so persistent. I looked to my left and saw smoke billowing out the front windows.”

A house in the 1200 block of La Mirada Street was on fire and Sammut, who lives two doors down on Summit Drive, stepped into action.

Sammut, 24, said he heard yelling, so he called 9-1-1 while approaching the house. A woman standing outside told Sammut someone else was inside.

Facing a “solid wall of black smoke,” Sammut said he approached the front door and yelled for the woman inside to walk toward his voice.

“I could not see one foot in front [of me],” Sammut said. “She’s talking back to me saying, ‘No. My birds.’

“I’m panicking. She steps out for one second with her hands up in the air, saying, ‘Oh my [gosh], my birds.’ She runs back in and I run after her. I closed my eyes and put my face in my shirt.

“I must have stepped 6 or 7 feet and grabbed her. She started fighting with me. I said, ‘Ma’am, [forget] your birds. You’re going to get killed.”

Sammut and the woman made it outside as the sound of arriving police and fire vehicles filled the air.

“I told her, ‘Ma’am, I’m so happy you are OK,’” said Sammut, who works part-time as a security guard at the Laguna Art Museum and as an assistant for Laguna Beach artist Marlo Bartels.

The fire “heavily damaged” the multistory house, according to a report on the city’s website.

No one was injured, but three birds died, and the fire’s cause is under investigation, though it appears to have been accidental, Laguna Fire Chief Jeff LaTendresse said.

Laguna Beach firefighters were dispatched to the scene at 6:17 p.m. and, with help from Newport Beach firefighters and the Orange County Fire Authority, extinguished the blaze in an hour.

The house sits on a hillside, with the first floor at street level and remaining two floors below, LaTendresse said. The fire started on the middle floor.

An adjacent house incurred “blistering from the heat,” but firefighters kept flames from spreading to neighboring properties, LaTendresse said.

Investigators are tallying property loss costs.

Sammut called the experience one of the “scariest moments” of his life, adding, “there are a lot of heroes in this story besides me.

“I did what I had to do.”

--

Bryce Alderton, bryce.alderton@latimes.com

Twitter: @AldertonBryce