Residents of Mountains Can Only Watch : Santa Monicas: Remote homesteads are burned or scorched as wall of fire moves toward the ocean.

Ranchers and urban refugees in the Santa Monica Mountains south of Thousand Oaks watched helplessly Wednesday as a wall of fire burned or threatened their remote homesteads and scorched thousands of acres on its way to the ocean.

The fires westernmost advance had flames licking at the Point Mugu Naval Air Weapons Station, but the base suffered no significant damage.

In the coastal mountains to the east, however, flames destroyed the Duquette Ranch and its eclectic collection of art and architectural treasures, despite a valiant struggle by firefighters and volunteers.

“There’s not enough equipment in here,” Ventura County Firefighter Vince Disanto said. “We’re not going to give up on it, though. We’re going to save as much as we can.”

As the flames bore down, however, ground crews pulled out and left the firefighting efforts to helicopters that dumped fire-retardant chemicals on buildings housing the art assembled by 79-year-old Tony Duquette, a Tony award-winning designer of Broadway and movie sets.

The artifacts included a boathouse with a Venetian gondola mounted on top, and gates culled from an 18th-Century Spanish church.

As the copters dropped load after load of powdery chemicals, strong winds dispersed much of it before it hit its mark.

“The wind is too gnarly,” said Brian Merrick, 25, of Point Dume. “It’s kind of a bummer to see this all go down.”

Merrick was one of a half-dozen young men who manned garden hoses in a futile effort to stop the flames.

“We’re professional surfers,” he said. “We don’t work. We only come out to work when there’s a fire or an earthquake or a mudslide. It’s the only time there’s any fun around here.”

But Merrick expressed dismay at the destruction: “It’s toasted. This place is toasted.”

Merrick said he talked with Duquette after the art collector evacuated his home of 36 years.

“He was just kind of in shock. He kept saying, ‘It’s all gone, it’s all gone.’ We kept asking him if he wanted us to bring his stuff out, and he just kept saying: ‘It’s all gone.’ ”

Nearby, ceramics artist Charlotte Greenblatt was moving her cat and her son’s musical equipment from her house.

Warily eyeing a huge column of smoke about 1 1/2 miles from her home, she talked about wetting down the house with her garden hose. “You can’t wet it down in advance. It just evaporates.”

Two bodies of water--Calleguas Creek and salt marshes along the ocean--were credited with keeping the flames from homes and other structures at the Point Mugu Navy base.

But Alan Alpers, a Navy spokesman, said electrical lines to the facility were cut and a test scheduled for Wednesday had to be canceled.

Near the base early Wednesday, CHP Officer Mike Robbins helped divert traffic on Pacific Coast Highway, which was closed most of the day because of the fire.

“At about 6:30 we watched it just sweep down the mountain,” Robbins said. “If you can imagine it, the entire hillside was solid burning flame. It was incredible.”

Firefighters from Point Mugu fought alongside county firefighters to protect Navy communications equipment and a row of houses on a ranch near the base. They lit a backfire at the bottom of the hill, directly in front of the houses, accurately betting that the flames would burn upward and exhaust the fuel supply.

Ranch owner Jack Broome expected his ranch to be spared.

“A year ago we had a controlled burn here and I believe that is what will save us,” he said. As it turned out, all of the residences were saved.

Further south along the coast, La Jolla Canyon at Point Mugu State Park was blackened by flames. All 10 people camping at nearby Sycamore Canyon were evacuated, but the campgrounds were untouched by flames.

Up Deer Creek Road, Ventura County Fire Capt. Tom O’Malley described the battle against the flames: “It’s totally nuts up here.”

O’Malley and a half-dozen other firefighters in three trucks were battling flames that threatened several residences. The firefighters were exhausted and had been fighting fires for about 20 hours.

Like many residents in the remote mountain canyons above the ocean, Bill and Patti Morgan went to bed Tuesday night believing the winds had calmed enough to spare their home from the flames creeping over the mountains.

But the Morgans were up again by 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, warned by plumes of orange-red smoke in the distance. They began hauling away belongings as the blaze crept toward their home.

The Morgans--former Malibu residents who bought the isolated house four months ago to get away from it all--said they never considered the fire danger.

“When you fall in love with a house, you don’t think about those things,” Bill Morgan said as the couple watched from a half-mile away as air tankers dropped red-flame retardant over their barn-shaped residence on Pacific View Road.

Michael Judge was an even newer arrival than the Morgans, having moved into a nearby residence on Miplomoc Road only two weeks ago from North Carolina. He got a rude welcome Wednesday morning as the glow of the fire approached.

“Flames were literally leaping over the mountain,” said Judge, 50.