Blaze Kills Man, Leaves 2 Refugee Families Homeless : Fire: Seven residents escaped unharmed but a worker who had been replacing a kitchen floor was fatally trapped behind a wall of smoke and flames.

One man was killed and two families of Vietnamese refugees were left homeless as fire gutted a house in Garden Grove on Sunday morning.

In an unrelated blaze, five people were evacuated Sunday when the roof at a Fullerton apartment complex caught fire. No serious injuries were reported there, although a mother and child were treated at the scene for shortness of breath.

American Red Cross officials provided food and shelter Sunday night for the residents displaced in the Fullerton fire as well as the seven residents who fled the fire in Garden Grove.

The Garden Grove fire broke out at 10:40 a.m. in a beige stucco house in the 10500 block of Teal Drive. Although the seven residents of the house managed to escape unharmed, neighbors and fire officials said a worker who had been replacing a kitchen floor was trapped inside behind a wall of smoke and flames.

As the doomed man screamed, one neighbor tried to get in through a back window, he said, but was unable to get past security bars that fire officials said had been installed throughout the house.

“I heard the guy screaming in pain and then the screams faded out,” said neighbor Joseph Young, 36.

After spending 20 minutes to extinguish the blaze, firefighters found the badly burned body of the worker in a hallway near the front door. Friends and family members summoned by police to the scene identified the victim as Francisco Mendez, 24, an immigrant from Oaxaca, Mexico, who, they said, had been contracted by the Vietnamese family to do the kitchen work.

A friend, Rojelio Villegas, said Mendez was working his second day on the job. Mendez had come to the United States four years ago and left most of his family in Mexico while he worked odd jobs, Villegas said.

“I think this is terrible,” Villegas said outside the charred house. “He was really my friend. He was a good guy.”

Fire broke out because Mendez was using a flammable solvent to remove old tile glue from the kitchen floor so he could put in new tile, said Battalion Chief Ted Just. Fumes from the solvent apparently built up until they exploded from an ignition source, most likely the pilot light on the kitchen stove, Just said.

Jeff Moore, who lives across the street, said he heard an explosion and looked outside to see sheets of flame leaping out of the front windows. He said the Vietnamese family members ran out through the front door and a garage door.

“They were screaming that there was still someone inside,” Moore said.

Young, who was working in his garage next door at the time, said he tried first to get in the burning house through the windows but could not pry loose the security bars. He said he went around to all the barred windows and used a 2-by-4 to break the glass out so smoke could get out. Then, he said, he kicked in the back door and tried to reach the victim.

“I went in about six feet but there was just too much smoke,” Young said. “I heard the guy in there screaming, and I was yelling so maybe he could hear my voice and come towards me.”

Just said the victim either became disoriented or was overcome with fire and smoke so rapidly that he could not escape. Just said he did not know whether Mendez had tried to get out the kitchen window, which was also barred.

Garden Grove arson investigator Bill Dumas said the security bars were illegally installed because none of them contained a safety feature that allows them to be released from inside the house.

No citations were issued pending further investigation, fire officials said.

Just said security bars can be dangerous during a fire.

“The obvious danger is that they block exiting in case of fire and can trap someone inside,” he said.

Neighbors said the Vietnamese residents installed the bars over most windows after moving in about two years ago. The residents declined comment at the scene.

“We feel so sad that we don’t want to talk,” Duong Huynh, 35, owner of the house, said through an interpreter.

Huynh, his wife, Huy Lai, 35, and their two children share the house with an aunt, as well as a Vietnamese father and son who rent a room from the family, said Doug Gavilanes, a Red Cross spokesman at the scene. Gavilanes identified all seven as Vietnamese refugees, none of whom can speak English.

Fire officials put damage at $100,000 to the house and $30,000 to the contents. The two families lost almost all their possessions except the clothes on their back. They huddled beneath a neighbor’s tree Sunday afternoon, while Red Cross officials arranged transportation to a local motel. Neighbors took up a collection drive, piling up clothes and other essentials on a sidewalk for the family to take.

“My kids play with their kids,” Darlene Young said. “They are very nice people.”

In Fullerton, fire officials responded at 10:13 a.m. Sunday to a roof fire at an apartment complex in the 2800 block of East Madison Avenue. It took 15 firefighters half an hour to put out the fire, which caused an estimated $30,000 in damage to two upstairs apartments and undetermined water damage to two downstairs apartments, said fire dispatcher John Shope.

The fire apparently was started by sparks from burning newspapers in a fireplace. Shope said embers from the fireplace drifted outside onto the shake-shingle roof, setting it ablaze.