Battling an inferno

In the beginning, responding to the Freeway Complex fire in the Yorba Linda/Carbon Canyon area was a little like leaping into chaos, some of the Newport Beach firefighters who battled it said.

While the flames were on the horizon, the smoke and all the confusion of a natural disaster led the path to it.

“It really is just chaotic,” remembered Capt. Jeff Boyles. “The strangest thing that I’ve seen, and I’ve never seen before was the westbound 91 [Freeway] lanes were closed, but the eastbound lanes were open. I saw cars stopping, doing U-turns, it was like the Anaheim Stadium parking lot.

“The off-ramps were on-ramps, the on-ramps were off-ramps, it was very scary for awhile. The cars are coming at us like asteroids,” Boyles continued. “It made us think, ‘That’s probably what it’s going to be like when we have a big earthquake.’ ”

Newport firefighters joined the emergency workers from several cities, including Costa Mesa, which sent firefighters and engines to the weekend’s Freeway Complex blaze. The flames scorched tens of thousands of acres of brush and hundreds of homes, as the Santa Ana Winds fueled it. Half of Newport’s firefighters returned Monday and Tuesday.

As Boyles and his engine company weaved a path toward Yorba Linda, the view only got worse, he said.

“They were losing so many structures. At one point, they had more structures on fire than they had engines,” he said. “It was devastating, it was like something out of a movie....[the fire] started too close to the neighborhoods.”

Boyles’ crew was part of a five-engine, 20-plus firefighter strike team that was called to help protect homes hours after the blaze began Saturday morning. When Boyles and the team pulled into the neighborhood they were assigned to protect, he said they drove into a neighborhood aflame, residents jumping on the engine pleading for help. Regrettably, he said, they had an assignment to take care of.

“We have an assignment at XYZ, not ABC. The powers-that-be were trying to get a handle on everything. We just can’t be everywhere,” Boyles said.

Waves of firefighters from around California responded in the hours and days after. One Newport Beach firefighter, Capt. Mike Liberto, remembers having mixed feelings as his engine crew was called from Newport Beach to help in Carbon Canyon, a blaze that eventually joined the rest to become one devastating inferno. Liberto’s home was in the path of the Yorba Linda fire, as were some of his relatives’ homes. He put himself in residents’ shoes when he rolled into neighborhoods he was assigned to protect.

“You got a million things going on in your head; when you think your livelihood could be going down the drain, your home could be burning,” he said. “Many of these people wouldn’t know their home was lost until they came back to their street and saw it was gone.”

Liberto’s strike team did not lose any buildings, he said, nor did his relatives. For him, what stood apart in this fire from the others was the intensity of the flames.

“You can’t outrun it,” he said. “The fuels are ready to burn. The thing that was most particularly different for me, was the pure speed. It would pass through one time, and then it would come through again.”

He remembered his crew fighting the fires on the eastern hills next to the 57 Freeway near Lambert Road in Brea, and watching as a ceiling of red-hot embers and pieces of ignited brush cruised overhead to the other side of the freeway. Before he knew it, firefighters were facing two walls of flames.

For years, the hills in the area were unscathed by fire, giving vegetation plenty of time to grow, die and add up. As homes developed farther inland and upward, a fire’s potential for devastation only grew, firefighters said. With the Santa Ana Winds acting as a steady fuel, the weekend fires grew enormous, moving from spot to spot before crews could react.

“This one was — bam! — you don’t have one fire, you have 10. Not 10, but 50,” Boyles added. “We’re going to continue to see this, we have this wildland-urban interface that’s continuing to develop now.”

Most Newport-Mesa engine companies had returned as of Tuesday. Fire officials had the blaze 75% contained as of Tuesday night.

JOSEPH SERNA may be reached at (714) 966-4619 or at joseph.serna@latimes.com.