100 Flee as Winds Fan Apartment Blazes

Los Angeles firefighters battled a Santa Ana wind-whipped blaze in the 11500 block of Rochester Avenue late Wednesday as flames that erupted in a condominium complex under construction on the Westside spread from one occupied apartment building to another.

“It’s like ‘The Towering Inferno’ ,” one resident of the area who declined to give her name said at the height of the fire. “It’s awful, just the worst thing you ever saw.”

More than 100 residents of nearby apartments were evacuated to a National Guard armory as winds spread the fire to additional structures and flaming embers started small roof fires in a two-block radius, fire officials said.

All available equipment, including water-dropping helicopters, were rushed to the area.

Two national guardsmen attending a meeting at the armory a few blocks away suffered smoke inhalation when they went outside to move their cars, fire officials said. One was taken to nearby UCLA Medical Center, and the other was treated at the scene.

Blaze Spread

The fire erupted shortly after 9 p.m. in a nearly completed 32-unit, four-story complex near the Wadsworth Veterans Administration Hospital and was spread by wind gusts of up to 35 m.p.h. to eight additional buildings before it was contained just before 11 p.m.

For a time, flames from the blaze shot 50 feet into the night sky, and the dense smoke was visible from miles away.

Electrical power to the area was knocked out, giving the scene a surreal air as mist from firefighters’ hoses and smoke created a fog-like effect, penetrated only by lights from emergency vehicles. Scores of residents lined nearby streets watching the blaze or drifted west toward Barrington Avenue, the nearest major street.

No estimate of damage was immediately available. But the building under construction was gutted and at least two other structures--a two-story duplex and a four-story apartment house--sustained heavy damage.

The cause of the blaze was undetermined, and arson investigators were at the scene.

Firefighters dodged downed power lines as they walked near the black, twisted wreckage of the gutted building.

“This whole area looks like a war zone,” one said.

“All of these buildings were on fire at one time,” said Ed Statten, 22, who was evacuated from a nearby building. “It was a matter of seconds before the whole thing went up.”

Firefighters went door to door in the densely populated area evacuating residents.

“This kind of weather with this kind of wind makes it very hard to fight fires,” Fire Inspector Ed Reed said. “The fire goes right down to the ground.”

Wholesale Assault

The winds, which gusted at gale-force in several locales, launched a wholesale assault on the Southland, smashing condominium units under construction, knocking out power in scattered areas, toppling a mobile home and leaving emergency services officials gearing up for the worst.

The combination of winds and humidity that dipped as low as 12% prompted fire departments in Los Angeles County and the Angeles National Forest to mobilize emergency crews and declare “red flag” alerts.

Small-craft advisories were issued along the coast, and officials closed Avalon Harbor on Santa Catalina Island to incoming traffic.

Three condominium units in a complex under construction in Rancho Cucamonga were heavily damaged as the building’s second and third stories collapsed in the heavy gusts, officials said.

The roofs of at least four nearby homes were blown away, and at least 10 utility poles were downed, blocking traffic, officials said.

“It’s just plain windy all over,” said Rancho Cucamonga’s emergency services coordinator, Marti Higgins, adding that no injuries were reported.

Wind-related outages left more than 40,000 customers without power, Southern California Edison Co. and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power reported.

Areas Hit Hard

Hardest hit areas included Malibu and the foothill communities of the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys, stretching from Chatsworth in the west to Glendora and San Dimas on the east.

Customers were without power for periods of a half-minute up to several hours, officials said.

Both utilities called in additional units Wednesday to handle emergencies.

A transition road to the Foothill Freeway in the Glendora area was closed for four hours after wind gusts blew a mobile home from the flat-bed truck that was hauling it, California Highway Patrol officials said.

Wednesday afternoon, Los Angeles County fire officials dispatched three emergency teams to Malibu and the Antelope Valley and brought on 35 additional firefighters in anticipation of fire danger, Inspector Elvin Miranda said.

No major brush fires were reported, although one wind-driven blaze in San Dimas spread from a palm tree to the roofs of two homes, causing about $5,000 damage.

Winds were blowing generally from 25 to 40 m.p.h. in coastal areas during the day, but by evening gale-force winds up to 66 m.p.h. hurtled through canyons and mountains.

‘Dropping Down’

“A high-pressure system is dropping down from Wyoming faster than a low-pressure system over Arizona is moving out,” said Patricia Cooper, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times. “This squeezes the air in between, increasing the winds.”

The action is similar to pushing water together between your palms, forcing it to squirt out faster around the edges of your hands, she said.

The winds are expected to continue today, diminishing slightly tonight, Cooper said.

Richard Vega of Riverside said winds broke a large tree in the 5500 block of 34th Street into three pieces.

“One piece fell on my mobile home,” he said. “The rest fell on my car. The wind has been bad all day. A lot of sand and dirt is blowing.”

Several mobile homes were reported blown over in a park in Highland in San Bernardino County, but there were no injuries.

Kathy Estrada, a dispatcher at Avalon Harbor, said winds reached 20 knots there on Wednesday afternoon.

“We’re anticipating more than that,” she said, explaining the closure of the facility to incoming vessels. “We’re getting ready.”

Pulled Off

Truckers pulled their rigs from the road, filling truck stops along Interstate 10.

“They just don’t want to go in any direction when the winds come up,” said Merrill Nelson, manager of a large Unocal truck stop in Ontario.

“We have 100 trucks here, and we’re full,” said Fred Chatterton of the Truck Roost in Fontana.

Times staff writers Nieson Himmel and Edward J. Boyer contributed to this article.