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California Burning: Photographs from the Los Angeles Examiner

Fire (Ralphs market at 3rd and LaCienega) Beverly Hills, 1951

This photograph shows a worried crowd of around 11,000 people standing around the scene of a burning Ralphs market at 8575 W. 3rd Street in Beverly Hills, California. The Ralphs Market Fire started on April 29, 1951 at 2pm, when witnesses saw a cloud of smoke coming from a storage room in the corner of the store. The initial cloud of smoke quickly grew thicker. Only two minutes later, the store’s 300 foot-long ceiling was covered in flames. All 300 customers had time to evacuate safely because the fire was identified in its early stages. However, only 65 of the 70 employees were able to leave the store. Five of them stayed inside, trying to fight the fire with a hose. As they were fighting it, the fire suddenly grew larger. Three of the five employees got away in time, but the assistant manager, Eldon Hedding, and a clerk Walker Sohn were engulfed by the flames and unfortunately burned to death. Firefighters, policemen, and investigators all arrived far too late, for traffic had jammed up multiple blocks around the scene. Their delayed arrival prevented them from doing their jobs. The cause of the of the fire is still unknown.

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3. Brush fire (Rio Hondo fire), 1951 Depicted is a brush fire emerging in Rio Hondo, a tributary of Los Angeles County whose name derives from the 'deep river' - Rio Hondo - that runs parallel to the San Gabriel River. Even as an area of land named after a body of water, fires still manage to ravage the land, and the efforts to mitigate this state of emergency caused no shortage of worry and damage. The fire spread rapidly through the brushes upon it's kindling, burning more than 50 acres of land and damaging two houses within a few hours [1]. The dry climate helped propagate the fire and spread embers to rooftops where the smoldering did most of its damage [5]. While the fire fortunately maintained itself within the riverbed [4], it didn't make the lives of the Los Angeles Fire Department easy. They had to storm together a 10 unit battalion that aggregated teams from Whitter and the State Department of Forestry to contain the flame. Shown in the image is the efforts of the fire department mobilizing to eliminate the flame. To that end they were able to shut down the fire in two hours, even deploying tractors with dozer blades in order to eliminate the immediate presence of fuel. While the nature of the fire was calmed quickly, quantifiable amounts of damage were done to the surroundings, and fire fighters were dispatched throughout the night to ensure embers didn't form again [1]. Fires like these continued to strike the area, and in 2005, volunteers and Angeles Chapter Staff came together to form a campaign called the Emerald Necklace which aims to plant trees and brushes that reinstate the park experience that perhaps once existed in the area [6].
4. Chatsworth Brush Fires, 1957
14. Warner Brothers Studio Fire (Burbank), 1952

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