Brush Fire Burns An Acre in Potrero

A midday brush fire at the mouth of Potrero Canyon burned an acre of brush on steep canyon walls Thursday. With the help of water-dropping helicopters, the blaze was stopped short of the backyards of homes on the canyon side of Friends Street. There were no reports of injuries. A construction worker cutting pipe with a torch inadvertently caused the fire, a fire spokesman said. A construction crew building a home on Friends spotted what appeared to be fog rolling in from the ocean around noon. ‘It looked just like the fog does,’ said worker Frank Archer. Then he, other workers and Lisa Jackson, the owner, smelled smoke and realized it was a fire. Neighbors called 911, while Archer, Jackson and another couple ran to the yard of the southernmost house (the owners weren’t at home), grabbed hoses and aimed them at the flames, which reached the edge of the yard. ‘We started spraying,’ Jackson said. ‘The fire was climbing fast. It was intense.’ Their fast action may have saved that home, which is covered in wood shingles. Firefighters initially responded to 15101 Pacific Coast Highway, but by the time they arrived at the mouth of Potrero, where the fire had started, it had climbed to the top. With no hydrant along the ‘peninsula’ of Friends and Via de las Olas, the crew hooked up to a hydrant on Lombard Avenue. Gibb Ratez, 94, who lives in the house next to the wood-shingled home, was taking a nap and wakened by the commotion. ‘I heard the noise and came out and the whole fire department was in my backyard,’ Ratez said. Three water-dropping helicopters helped douse the fire before it could reach the homes or the tall eucalyptus along Friends as it turns into Via de las Olas. The lack of wind also favored firefighters. A helicopter landed in Potrero Canyon, off Friends Street, carrying an 11-man crew of firefighters with hand tools and chain saws, tasked with cutting a fire line along the perimeter of the fire. Along with teams from Stations 19 (Brentwood), 23 (Pacific Palisades’Los Liones), 69 (Pacific Palisades’Sunset) and 37 (Westwood), they were able to put the fire out within an hour. The sparks that started the blaze came from a construction site near PCH about one-half mile north of Temescal Canyon Road, said fire spokesman Erik Scott.