Some Complain Laguna Lacked in Preparedness

John and Alicia Burnham were on their way to Pasadena on Wednesday morning when they were among the first to spot a small fire snaking along Laguna Canyon Road.

They called 911 from their car phone, but the line was busy. They eventually reached emergency officials but said it took at least half an hour for fire trucks to arrive. They wondered: Why did it take so long?

On Friday, the Burnhams joined a chorus of residents and authorities who demanded answers, offered excuses or pointed fingers over how a fire of such humble beginnings could have exploded into such a destructive inferno, in which more than 300 homes were leveled overnight.

Orange County Fire Chief Larry J. Holms said Friday that the fire took off so fast in gusty Santa Ana winds that even an assembled army with the most sophisticated equipment and advance notice could not have prevented most of the destruction as the flames swept through Laguna Beach.

“Some areas were simply indefensible,” Holms said. “When you have homes sitting on stilts high up on a hill, surrounded by vegetation, with fire coming right at them, there is no way to save them.”

But critics weren’t so sure and attempted to assign blame for the disaster.

* Some Laguna Beach residents vowed to launch a recall drive, blaming City Council members who bickered for years over whether to build a water reservoir in the city’s hills as a fire precaution. “This is the last straw,” said civic activist Darren Esslinger, who said he fielded about 100 calls Friday from residents angry with the council.

* Others were concerned about what authorities described as an apparent miscommunication Wednesday that left on the ground two Marine helicopters urgently needed to help ferry water.

* And both residents and firefighters complained about water shortages during the most intense rampage of the fire Wednesday.

Fire crews called in from other parts of the state arrived only to find that their fire hoses wouldn’t connect with local water hydrants.

But fire officials said some of the mishaps were unavoidable in the confusion that resulted when so many fires occurred simultaneously in Southern California. They also noted that this week’s wildfires in Laguna and along the Ortega Highway finally produced the devastation fire officials had warned of for decades. They said it was inevitable in a county where homeowners and developers have continued to scrape away lush coastlines and pristine hills to cram in one South County neighborhood after another, seemingly oblivious to the mounting fire danger.

Orange County paid the price this week when the firestorm descended, exposing the true cost of all this development: low water pressure and obstructed access to residential areas.

Although some authorities disagreed over whether the response from state and federal agencies could have been quicker, Holms insisted that the Laguna fire could not have been stopped under any circumstances. He said Laguna residents’ penchant for thick landscaping and homes made of combustible wood, combined with the Santa Ana winds and lack of recent rain, made the city an easy target.

“You can’t point the finger at the state, the county or the city on this,” the chief said. “Everyone had the responsibility to improve the survivability of their homes. Frankly, I’m amazed that (damage) isn’t worse.”

In the Mystic Hills area of Laguna Beach, where conservative estimates placed the loss at 150 homes, firefighters faced one water-related problem after another.

Often, there simply wasn’t enough water to go around. When there was enough water, there wasn’t always enough pressure to pump it uphill at maximum flow.

Firefighters on one street often tried to cadge water from their counterparts on another street Wednesday. “Nobody wants to give it up,” said Orange County firefighter Rink Nemnich as he sat helpless on the back of his engine on Skyline Drive.

“We had one guy come by and ask us to try and save his house, but I told him we couldn’t, we were out of water. He was upset, but he understood,” Nemnich said.

Left with dry wells and a shortage of water tankers and “Bambi buckets”--150-gallon baskets toted by helicopters--firefighters eventually drained swimming pools, including the one at Laguna Beach High School.

Relief efforts were further hampered when firefighters from Tulare County and Kings County, who had traveled some 300 miles to help, were bedeviled by their hydrant attachments, which didn’t fit some of the local hydrants. After the Oakland Hills fire in 1991, the state passed a law requiring all hydrants in the state to be uniform, said Tulare County Fire Capt. Pete Arnet.

“But the rules are probably less than a year old,” he said. “And it’s going to take a while to standardize things across the state.”

With Laguna residents still picking through debris Friday, political differences were quickly revived.

In recent years, city and local water district officials had stepped up campaigns to convince residents that more water storage was critically needed, especially in the hilly Top of the World neighborhood raked by the recent fire.

Laguna Beach Councilman Wayne L. Peterson, a strong supporter of the reservoir, said the fire presented a dramatic argument for moving ahead with the project.

“All I know is that the reservoir is meant to provide a steady gravity flow in a time of emergency and provide water for all the neighborhoods below it,” he said. “Whether it would have stopped the fire or not, I don’t know.”

“The water district officials are professional, and they believe we are substantially underserved,” Peterson said. “I think it’s time we started working with them.”

Joe Sovella, the Laguna Beach Water District’s general manager, said the district just last week took possession of the land for the reservoir after trying to get the property condemned through eminent domain procedures. But the district still does not have full ownership of the land, near Aliso/Wood Canyons Regional Park, and must clear other environmental and bureaucratic hurdles, he said.

The water district has had the 3-million-gallon reservoir in the planning stages since 1990.

Members of Village Laguna, the city’s most powerful political group, have opposed the site, saying that it is too environmentally sensitive.

Norm Grossman, one of the city’s planning commissioners, said the reservoir wouldn’t have mattered during the fire.

“Nothing could have changed this,” he said. “This was a freak of nature. But people want to blame something.”

Orange County Fire Capt. Dan Young also said a reservoir would have made little difference. “You’d need a system 10 times the size of Laguna Beach’s to fight a fire of this size, a fire that might happen once in 20 years,” he said. “It’s unreasonable to be prepared that way, which is why firefighters carry water with them. No community is ever going to have as much water as you would need in a situation like this.”

“There was no situation where they opened fire hydrants and no water came out,” Young added.

Concerns about how quick help arrived in Laguna have added to the debate.

On Wednesday afternoon, said County Fire Division Chief Pat Walker, while Board of Supervisors Chairman Harriett M. Wieder was declaring a countywide state of emergency and with Laguna Beach fully engulfed, the county was on a statewide “waiting list” for fixed-wing air support that would bring large-capacity air tankers for water and chemical drops over the most serious areas.

During that time, Walker said, most of the air support was left to helicopter units from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and the Anaheim Police Department.

County Fire Capt. Gary Stenberg, stationed in Irvine, said his crew was among the first three engines to arrive at the start of the Laguna fire, located less than a mile south of the San Diego Freeway and off Laguna Canyon Road.

Stenberg said that given the fire’s pace and the force of the Santa Ana winds fueling it, aircraft were needed immediately to curb the blaze, which broke out just before noon Wednesday.

“In this particular case, aircraft would have made a difference, but we didn’t have it,” he said. “They did not arrive on-scene quick enough in this case to make a difference.”

County Fire Chief Holms said Friday that an air support fleet was making water drops by Wednesday evening in response to the county’s call for help. He said any delay could be been explained by urgent fire needs in other parts of the state.

Richard Aronson, head of the fire rescue division of the state Office of Emergency Services, said that county officials moved quickly after assessing the blaze.

He said county fire authorities were alerted to the fire at 11:50 a.m. Wednesday and at 1 p.m. requested the assistance of 20 strike teams--roughly 100 fire engines, 60 to 80 firefighters and 20 supervisors. Aronson said fire teams arrived fairly quickly, estimating an hour or so. “Looks to me like that’s pretty quick response time,” he said.

County Fire Department officials said Friday that logs reflecting response times were not available because authorities were still swamped with firefighting and cleanup.

Holms said that Orange County gradually moved up on the state-response priority list, and by Wednesday night the threat to life and property here had made the area the top priority in the state.

He said local officials initially turned down offers of two Marine Corps helicopters to aid in the water drops, but he did not know why that happened. When local fire officials reversed that decision later in the day, Holms said, the apparent miscommunication may have resulted in the helicopters not responding.

Despite their concerns, the Burnhams said Friday that they do not intend to criticize the firefighters who battled the blaze. After all, they saved the family’s home.

“The firemen were heroic, wonderful guys,” John Burnham said.

Times staff writers Jeff Brazil, Leslie Earnest and Nancy Wride contributed to this report.