Cigarette May Have Set Fire on Mt. Laguna

A “carelessly discarded” cigarette may have been the cause of a fire on Mt. Laguna that burned to within 200 yards of campgrounds and homes Monday morning and has scorched more than 4,000 acres, fire officials said.

The blaze, which began Sunday morning, has forced scores of campers and residents to flee, said California Department of Forestry Capt. Dan Frias. The blaze was still out of control Monday night and may take several days to control.

Meanwhile, a convict firefighter was killed and six others were injured in Big Sur as they battled one of more than 40 major wildfires that continued to burn out of control Monday in the hot, dry West.

At Mt. Laguna, cabins and a one-time Air Force base have escaped damage from the fire, which started about 8:30 a.m. Sunday on U. S. Forest Service land just south of the Cuyapaipe Indian reservation, where fire investigators found a cigarette they believe started the fire, Frias said.

Reservation Land Scorched

About one-third to half of the reservation land, home of the Southern Diegueno tribe, was destroyed, said Rosalinda Ewen, a spokeswoman for the U. S. Forest Service. No structures on the reservation were burned, Ewen said.

Five firefighters have suffered minor injuries, said forestry department spokeswoman Cele Cundari.

Firefighting operations were complicated Monday when one of the tanker planes being used to drop fire retardant was damaged in a “wheels up” landing at an airstrip in Ramona. No one was injured, but the plane blocked the runway, stranding two other tanker planes on the ground.

The fire traveled quickly north through the reservation Sunday night and early Monday, Frias said. About 11:15 a.m. Monday, the fire roared west through a canyon and threatened the Burnt Rancheria campgrounds and landmark Laguna Mountain Lodge and Trading Post.

“We had a run for our money,” Frias said. The fire, he said, “made a good run at homes.”

The fire burned through a fire retardant line that crews had set up by hand at the top of the canyon, Frias said.

But firefighters from the forestry department, the Forest Service and several rural departments built another fire line that stopped the blaze about 200 yards from the campgrounds.

Gary Seda, owner of Laguna Mountain Lodge and Trading Post, could see smoke from his business as it rose through the trees across Sunrise Highway.

‘It Was Boiling Up’

“It was boiling up, and that’s when (authorities) told us to leave,” Seda said.

But Seda, who said he was in no danger, decided to stay. “The building, that was the only thing I was concerned about,” Seda said.

Most of the lodge’s occupants had left Sunday night.

Down the road, Pat Huntington also decided to stay in her home.

“This is the homestead--you just don’t bail,” Huntington said. Her wooden house was built by her great-grandfather in the mid-1800s, Huntington said.

“We’re not dumb. We got everything ready just in case (we had to leave,” Huntington said.

The rocky terrain and steep canyons made it difficult for crews to reach sections of the blaze, Frias said. The terrain also created fire pockets that endangered crews, Frias said.

“We’re just hoping to get through till the evening,” said Frias, when cooler temperatures made it easier to fight the blaze. “There’s still a potential danger until we get a secure line,” Frias said of the hazard to homes.

Four air tankers, three helicopters and 1,050 firefighters battled the blaze Monday.

The blaze, dubbed “The Thing” by firefighters because of its location in Thing Valley, caused authorities to close four to five campgrounds on Mt. Laguna.

Sunrise Highway north of Interstate 8 was also closed to non-residents through late Monday night, Cundari said.

Authorities ask that anyone with information about the cause of the fire call 445-5587 or 588-0364.

Across the West, more than 11,500 firefighters were on lines in California, Oregon, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska, among them personnel shipped in from Alaska where they were freed up by rains that had quenched several weekend blazes there.

Ann Finklestein, a spokeswoman at the federal Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Ida., said fires burning since the weekend began had charred more than 167,000 acres by nightfall Monday. At Big Sur, gusting winds, rugged terrain, heavy brush and a lack of access roads hampered the more than 700 firefighters deployed around an arson blaze in and around Molera State Park about 20 miles south of Carmel. Officials said at least 2,600 acres had been blackened by nightfall.

The officials said Antonio Hernandez, 26, who was serving time on a narcotics-possession conviction in San Diego County last November, was killed Sunday night when a fire-weakened tree fell on him and other members of a state Department of Corrections crew from the Galiban Conservation Camp near Soledad. The injuries suffered by six others were said to range from minor scrapes to broken bones.

Mike Sanders, a state corrections officer, said that, despite the tragedy, the convicts want to continue battling the fire.

“They’re all shook up, but they want to keep fighting,” Sanders said. “All this time, they’ve been losers--druggers, dopers. But when they see a wall of fire and cut the line that stops it, they know they are doing something positive.”

In Northern California, almost 1,150 fire personnel continued to work the lines around a blaze that had charred more than 4,600 acres of timberland in the Sierra west of Honey Lake in Lassen County.

In nearby Plumas County, gusting winds continued to harass about 600 firefighters working in heavily forested terrain south of Prattville. There were no reports of injury or damaged structures, but more than 4,000 acres had burned since the fire broke out Saturday.

The West’s most devastating blaze, in property damage, was the 1,760-acre Sugarloaf Mountain fire west of Denver, where 42 homes and seven other structures burned Sunday afternoon as flames raced through Boulder Canyon.

In Nebraska, a fire continued to spread after charring more than 60,000 acres and destroying an undetermined number of ranch and farm buildings near the town of Crawford.

In Utah, fire crews reported they were close to containing a 15,500-acre fire in remote brushland about 20 miles west of the Colorado state line and three other blazes that had blackened a total of about 10,000 acres.

Contributing to this article were Valarie Basheda in Big Sur and Eric Malnic in Los Angeles.