Malibu Wildfire Redux: Saturday’s Corral Fire Claims Nearly 50 Homes

• Preliminary Assessment Is that Destructive Blaze Was Human in Origin•

By Hans Laetz

Forty-nine houses burned, but no one was killed or seriously injured, when a more than 4500-acre wildfire, possibly ignited by boisterous outdoor partiers at the top of Corral Canyon, came racing out of the Santa Monica Mountains early Saturday morning.

Residents describe an awful scene in the predawn darkness. Flashing lights and wailing sirens from sheriff’s vehicles, and pounding fists from deputies and neighbors, awakened several hundred people on streets off Corral Canyon Road, a dead-end ridgetop road, three miles inland from and several hundred feet above the ocean.

The fire raced southwest from its point of origin at the road’s northern dead-end, into several groups of houses. The 150 or so homes clustered in three hillside tracts in Malibu Bowl and El Nido had slim chances: only a few fire trucks could make it up Corral Canyon in the 45 minutes or so it took the flames to arrive.

By sunrise, the cluster of houses perched along the upper reaches of Corral Canyon had suffered a terrible toll – at least 32 houses in Malibu Bowl destroyed by 7 a.m. Streets such as Lookout Road, Lockwood Road, Ingleside Way and Corral Canyon Road were hit hard.

Down at the coast, most Malibu residents awoke Saturday to the all-too familiar drill of looking at water-dropping helicopters on television, trying to triangulate how far away the danger was from escape routes, and making plans to help themselves or their friends escape from fire.
Like a month ago, this weekend's brushfire caught the city sleeping, on a weekend morning. Many people along the 27-mile coastline had no idea of the peril until they turned on the television, or stepped outside to retrieve the morning paper, only to see the sky filled with a golden-orange glow as the rising sun caught the plume of acrid smoke.

Charter Communications, the city’s primary cable TV company, lost 5000 feet of fiber cable early in the morning, again blacking out much of the city’s TV service and some Internet and telephone connections.

As the sun rose, a wall of fire headed southwest toward the two clusters of hillside homes just to the west, along Latigo Canyon Road. An amazing work of fire helicopter aviation saved dozens of houses clustered near Ocean View Drive. A caterpillar line of fire trucks arriving from Los Angeles had crept up steep, narrow Latigo Canyon Road, one mile to the west of the burning Malibu Bowl.

Fire trucks were parked in most of the driveways of the 100 or so homes along Latigo Canyon Road, the homes draped across a steep ridgetop about three miles north of Pacific Coast Highway.

Fire burned up to and around the homes. Landscaping, playground sets and cars burned. But the first wave of fire burned right up to the cluster of houses near Ocean View Drive at Latigo Canyon Road, and was stopped on a house-by-house basis. Of the 15 houses facing the fire front, not one was lost.

Newell Road, where six Glendale firefighters were burned 11 years ago, was singed but spared. Six firefighters suffered injuries described as minor today.

But on the ridge further downhill, where Latigo Canyon Road makes a switchback, flames raced through several houses and over the ridge, crossing the road and racing down into Escondido Canyon. Houses on the ridge near the active landslide on Latigo Canyon Road, a familiar landmark for motorists, were particularly hard hit.

In the canyon bottom along Via Escondido, the front of the fire was largely stopped by reinforcements, including Cal Fire trucks arriving from a state command post in Camarillo. But burning embers rushed a half-mile ahead of the fire front, claiming at least three houses within a block or two of Geoffrey’s Restaurant.

As the day went on, it would turn out those were the last houses to be lost to flames.
The fire jumped PCH at Latigo Shores, singing the landscaping between the road and condominiums, but sparing the structures. By midmorning, the heavily protected BeauRivage Restaurant and nearby Union 76 station were surrounding by burning hills.

Although the first wave of fire spared the homes along Latigo, by 10 a.m., a new wave of fire had swung around to the north of that neighborhood, and was threatening to cross the road on the subdivision's northern side.

Flames topped 100 feet, measured against a three-story house across the street, as the front crested the ridge. Fire helicopters dropped water on either side of the main advance, and firefighters in the driveways below took up defensive positions.

At the very last moment, fire crews on the road lit backfires, and the hundred-foot wall of orange and black sucked the small backfires up the hill, robbing the advancing curtain of fire of its fuel.

Despite predictions of doom, firefighters said their trucks had no trouble passing the one-lane bridge over Solstice Creek.

By 11 a.m., the 200 houses still standing on Latigo Canyon Road were again saved.

Fire chief P. Michael Freeman said no houses were burned after the initial fire advance ended at about 7 a.m. By sunset, the familiar portable city of firefighters had been set up on Civic Center Way, the satellite trucks were deployed, and Malibu was again settling down for a night under siege.

And for the third time this year, the county fire chief and municipal authorities proclaimed that Malibu dodged a bullet. This time the cost was steep: 32 houses lost in Malibu Bowl, three houses lost in El Nido, five in Escondido Canyon, six along Latigo Canyon Road and several other houses in more remote areas.

A complete list of damaged and destroyed houses is available at http://www.malibu-ca.gov/download/index.cfm?fuseaction=download&cid=11426