Homeowner emerges as hero among ashes of burnt garage

Deepa Bharath

NEWPORT BEACH -- East Bluff residents Ed Cox and his wife, Kathy,

spent Wednesday cleaning up the charred remains of their garage after a

sudden fire Tuesday night caused about $90,000 in damages, torching their

two Mercedes Benz cars.

“I’ve never seen a fire all my life,” Ed Cox said. “And I hope I never

see one ever again.”

Cox was also a hero Tuesday night when he broke the lock off his

elderly neighbor’s metal gate to get inside and help her escape through

the front door. No one was hurt in the fire.

“I yelled and I yelled, but she didn’t hear me,” Cox said. “So I tore

down the gate.”

Cox did a good thing, said Newport Beach Fire and Marine Capt. John

Blauer.

“He was right in doing what he did,” he said.

Flames had leaped through the two-car garage around 7 p.m., when

firefighters arrived at the scene. Although they snuffed out the blaze in

about 15 minutes, everything in the garage was black, Blauer said.

“The whole place was cooked,” he said. “When we got there, we couldn’t

even tell what kind of cars they were.”

A small portion of the living area of the house was damaged, and two

of the neighboring homes suffered some smoke damage.

The fire started in the garage from burning fireplace embers that had

been dumped into a trash can, authorities said.

“The garage was completely closed, and the heat just built up and

built up inside till there was a fire,” Blauer said.

The thick smoke swirling out of the garage was spotted by a passerby

who pounded on the door of the home to alert the residents.

Cox said he is skeptical about officials’ theory that the fire started

from the hot ashes in the trash can.

“The cleaning lady usually wraps it up in a paper bag,” he said. “I

don’t see how the paper would have made it if the ashes were hot.”

But the important thing is no one got hurt, he added.

“This is a condo complex, and the fire can go through the roof,” he

said. “We’re lucky everybody is OK.”