CALIFORNIAN FIRES AND GALE

Northern Advocate, 25 October 1935, Page 8

CALIFORNIAN FIRES AND GALE

WIDESPREAD DAMAGE FILM STARS’ HQMES BURNED tUnited Press Association-By Electric Telegraph. — Copyright.! (Received 10 a.m.) LOS ANGELES, October 23. fjpWENTY cowboys were temporarily trapped in rolling clouds of smoke, as fire and gale caused damage estimated at 4,000,000 dollars in Southern California. An emergency call was made for gas masks to be used in attempts to rescue cowboys from a corral in a canyon of the Malibu area, a beach resort. The cowboys were struggling to save stock. Later Game the news that the men had been rescued. Four brush fires raged through outlying areas of Los Angeles, and even licked the fringe of the suburbs. For a time Los Angeles was grey with dust, whipped up by the winds with a velocity of 45 m.p.h., and in one case, 75 m.p.h. Ships Stall'd, Out to Sea. Ships stood out to sea for several hours, rather than venture into the harbour.

More than 200 of the 2000 men who fought the flames were treated for injuries. Sand lashed in from the desert, and threatened to block the trans-continental railway service over the Canjon Pass. Union Pacific crews Shovelled the sands off to keep the tracks clear. Three highways were closed because of fires. The most destructive was in the foothill regions below Mount Lowe and Mount Wilson. Forty residences in the fashionable foothills districts and the canyons from Alpadena to Flint Ridge, where the millionaires dwell, were burned. A sanatorium at Lavina was burned a few 'minutes after more than 100 patients had taken refuge at Pasadena and Los Angeles. Fire was checked after 11 hours’ work. Out of Control. * I A second fire in the Malibu district ] is raging out of control through 100,000 acres at Malibu Beach. The home of Mr Charles Farrell, the film actor, was destroyed. A third fire occurred in the Orange County and a fourth in the north, in Kagel Canyon. Orchards suffered and oil derricks toppled over. No deaths have been reported, but it is not known whether everyone has been accounted for. In the Malibu area hundreds of cattle are believed to have perished. Mr Chas. Chic Sale, fihp actor, his wife and two sons, were marooned in a circle of flaming bush. They wrapped coats about their heads and plunged to safety.