Fire’s Threat to Wetlands Averted : Arson: Officials say youth admits setting spectacular blaze in stacked utility poles. Creosote kept from marsh.

Firefighters worked for two hours to control a deliberately set fire that burned a large stack of telephone poles in an unincorporated area near the Bolsa Chica Wetlands on Sunday, sending up billowing black clouds of smoke that could be seen for 20 miles.

Within six hours, arson investigators had arrested a 15-year-old Huntington Beach youth on felony arson charges, said Orange County Fire Department Capt. Dan Young. Interviews with other youths led investigators to the teen-ager at his home, Young said.

The youth admitted setting the fire, Young said. “He and his parents and their insurance company are probably (responsible) to cover the cost,” of fighting the blaze, Young said, estimating it at more than $100,000.

Emergency crews fighting the fire, which broke out at 3:06 p.m. at Wood-Man Pole Co., 17200 Bolsa Chica Road, dug trenches to pool runoff water and prevent the poles’ creosote coating from draining into the nearby wetlands, Young said.

Most of the water will be allowed to soak into the ground or drain from the makeshift dike into the adjoining wetlands after it is separated from the creosote, Young said. Officials from the Fire Department’s hazardous materials unit and county health officials monitored the runoff Sunday night to ensure that no contaminated water entered the wetlands, he said.

The fire involved 400 telephone poles, each 30 to 40 feet long, which the company converts for various uses, including backstops for Little League baseball fields. The business is southeast of Bolsa Chica Road and Los Patos Avenue in an unincorporated area between Huntington Beach and Seal Beach.

Hundreds of onlookers gathered after the blaze broke out and watched as 10 fire engines, 60 firefighters and three bulldozers from the Orange County and Huntington Beach fire departments brought the fire under control.

There were no reported injuries. The fire destroyed about $15,000 worth of poles stored at the business, Young said.

If it had occurred later in the season, the fire might have spread to grassy lots and wood shingle roofs downwind, Young said.

“That grass still has some green in it and it certainly kept it from spreading” Sunday, Young said. Condominiums about half a mile from the spectacular blaze were not endangered by flames that rose from the 15-foot-high stack of poles, fire officials said.

Owners of the telephone pole refurbishing business helped firefighters remove the poles one at a time with heavy machinery late Sunday, to ensure that there were none left smoldering in the pile.

“We’ll have crews on it all night,” Young said. “We’re just going through a very painstaking process through the night of removing the logs.”