Fireworks are the suspected cause of a brush fire that ignited in a hilly area of Laguna Beach on Monday afternoon, prompting evacuation orders for a few hundred homes, officials said.
The Rancho fire started around 2:15 p.m. near Rancho Laguna Road and Morningside Drive, according to the Laguna Beach Fire Department.
Fire officials are continuing to investigate the blaze, including whether fireworks are at the root of its ignition, Laguna Beach Mayor Alex Rounaghi told The Times. No one is in custody at this time, he said.
Evacuation orders were issued for La Mirada Street, Katella Street, Summit Drive and Baja Street, and a temporary evacuation center was opened at the Community and Susi Q Center, at 380 3rd St.
Laguna Beach Fire Chief Niko King said that four firefighting helicopters, one firefighting aircraft and multiple ground crews were deployed to combat the three-acre fire.
“We think we’ve made the right kind of progress so far. We’re not out of the woods yet, but we think we got a good handle on it,” City Manager Dave Kiff told The Times around 4:30 p.m.
Rounaghi said it appeared that no homes had been damaged thus far but urged residents to continue to heed evacuation orders.
The rush to evacuate the area led to major roads across Laguna Beach being clogged with traffic. A stretch of South Coast Highway between Broadway Street and Crown Valley Parkway was closed because of the fire. Traffic heading south was being diverted to Laguna Canyon Road, according to the city.
Kiff attributed the early success of firefighting efforts to the rapid response of mutual aid partners such as the Orange County Fire Authority and to wildfire safety improvements implemented by the city.
The Fire Department had recently thinned vegetation in the area where the fire ignited in an effort to limit the amount of available fuel for a potential wildfire, Rounaghi said. This proactive thinning is regularly completed in the city’s designated fuel modification zones.
In addition, the city has installed a special water tank in the hills where the Rancho fire is burning, Kiff said. The tank is connected to a high-pressure water line so that it can be refilled rapidly, thereby increasing the rate at which firefighting aircraft can perform water drops.
Over the last several years, the city has spent more than $25 million enacting a fire mitigation plan approved in 2019, Rounaghi said. The city recently updated that plan in the wake of the devastating Palisades and Eaton fires and is working on additional fire safety improvements.
“We know it’s not a question of if but when the next wildfire happens, and certainly today is a perfect example of that,” Rounaghi said. “So we go above and beyond in terms of preparedness.”
