On PCH, a Frantic Morass of Bentleys and Pickups : Gridlock: Firetrucks are stymied as Malibu millionaires and Topanga ranchers stall the highway.

By ANN W. O’NEILL and BOB POOL

Nov. 3, 1993 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

As the wind drove showers of embers across Pacific Coast Highway, sheets of flames seemed to chase thousands who fled their hillside homes with the barest of possessions stashed in their cars. But when they reached the highway, they ground to a halt in terrifying gridlock that stretched for miles along the Pacific.

While their cars idled or inched forward Tuesday toward the south, and safety, evacuees of the Malibu and Topanga fires waited in terror as waves of fire raced down the hillsides and consumed everything in their path.

At Las Flores Canyon, burning embers the size of golf balls rained down, popping open as they struck the street. Houses and at least one car burst into flames. Firefighters ran hoses along the center of the highway next to the line of stalled vehicles and, finally, were able to get the evacuees moving again.

When the brush fire that roared through these brush-logged coastal canyons finds its place in history, it will be marked by a single, powerful image: total gridlock.

It was not a surprise to those who know the area that the Santa Ana-driven flames raced to the sea. Nor was it a surprise that the evacuees became stalled in their cars on the road that is essentially the one exit from the hills and beaches of Malibu.

The winding four-lane highway, which succumbs to traffic on sunny Sunday afternoons, was overwhelmed by the exodus of 3,000 residents from communities stretching from Nicholas Canyon Beach near the Ventura County line to Topanga Canyon.

They walked, they rode out on horseback, some even roller skated.

Kari Hendler, 31, drove down Las Flores Canyon just in front of the flames. She had a tank of propane gas in her car. “I thought my car would explode,” said Hendler, who saved family heirlooms and “silly things.”

Olivia Thornton was in tears, trying to get to her house on Carbon Beach: She’d walked several miles from Sunset Boulevard. “I just cried for everybody,” she said.

She recalled how she had to turn off the news coverage of the infernos of last week. “I just couldn’t watch. . . . It made me so sad.”

Now, her hills were in flames. All around, there were hellish scenes of chaos as Malibu greeted residents with fury, flame and gridlock as they returned home from work or errands.

Malibu residents were already hardened to periodic battles with waves, mud and fire. But the nightmare Tuesday night was worse than anyone could imagine: Smoke obscured a bruised-looking sky, prematurely turning afternoon into evening. Flames leaped all around, and there was no place to go.

The Coast Guard cutter Conifer anchored off Malibu Beach, ready to rescue up to 400 evacuees. Sheriff’s deputies and Los Angeles County marshals evacuated most canyon areas and exclusive beachfront communities most of the 20-mile length of Malibu. The evacuation order went out for Malibu at 4:30 p.m.

About 20 took refuge on the beach at La Costa Beach Club. “We left friends there (at the club),” said attorney Glenn Carins, who had lost his own beachfront home in Malibu. “They were going to sit it out on the sand.”

But most people headed for the highway. For every Bentley, it seemed, there were three pickup trucks towing livestock trailers.

Dorothy Meier, a sociology professor at Cal State Northridge who lives in Malibu, called a cab to rescue her as flames threatened her house. She loaded two cats and two dogs into the taxi and, as the driver pulled away, looked back to see her home catch fire. Meier had made it through five previous fires unscathed.

Many residents wore towels around their faces to protect them from the smoke as they walked and ran, carrying paintings, boxes, knapsacks and suitcases stuffed with whatever could be grabbed on a moment’s notice.

A young blond man sat on a rock on the beach near PCH. He surveyed the hellish scene, dropped his head into his hands and began to weep.

Some people put their valuables at water’s edge while others drove them out. Vince Neil of Motley Crue loaded gold and platinum records earned by the rock group into his car.

Farther south along PCH near Topanga Canyon Road, the highway became so jammed with motorists trying to reach their homes to the north that hundreds fire engines from throughout Southern California had trouble reaching the fire lines. Shortly afterward, the California Highway Patrol closed all northbound traffic except for emergency vehicles.

A Malibu area man trapped in his car by the fast-moving fire survived when he called 911 on his cellular phone and followed the instructions of a Ventura County Fire Department dispatcher.

Jackie Noel took the call from James Volpi, who lives alone. “He was trapped in his car trying to get away, but he was blocked by fire,” Noel said.

Noel, 31, who has worked as a Ventura fire dispatcher for seven years, told Volpi to get away from all vegetation. “I told him to get a blanket, soak it and cover himself,” Noel said. She further instructed him to take shallow breaths and, even if he felt like he was on fire, to stay in place.

He dutifully headed for the empty swimming pool in his back yard, where he took refuge for an hour. He lost everything, but he and the pool survived.

Most residents of exclusive Malibu Colony fled their oceanfront homes as the fire burned half a mile away, but a few stayed on.

One of those who stayed was Barry Spikings, producer of such movies as “The Deer Hunter” and co-producer of “When Harry Met Sally.”

“Maybe we’re not being very smart,” he said, “but our home is worth several million dollars.”

Next door to Spikings’ large white, single-story, turreted house is the blue and gray, two-story home of Paul Almond, producer of small art films.

He too elected to stay.

“If the flames get too close,” Almond said, “we’ll just walk into the ocean.” Along Pacific Coast Highway south of Malibu, encampments of displaced residents gathered to anxiously trade information about the advancing fires. They huddled in the darkness, a clear starry sky overhead to the south and east and a wall of fire descending from the north and west.

At Calabasas High School, the football field had been turned into a makeshift corral. Two horses were hitched to the goal post, awaiting trailers.

While most residents of the Malibu area were evacuated, one elderly woman refused to go.

As hillsides and homes blazed just to the south, the woman walked her two poodles through the smoke-choked, deserted streets.

“I’ve been here for more than 30 years, and I’ve seen plenty of fires,” said the woman, who didn’t give her name. “And we’re not about to be evacuated now.”