Illegal Fireworks Blamed in Blaze in Sherman Oaks
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Illegal fireworks started a 10-acre brush fire in Sherman Oaks on Saturday, ironically the day that the Los Angeles Fire Department began putting up banners warning that pyrotechnics are illegal in the city.
Spokesman Bob Collis said the department displays banners every year a few weeks before the Fourth of July to make the public aware that even so-called “safe and sane” fireworks are illegal in the city.
The fire was started shortly before noon on dry hillside slopes near Dixie Canyon Avenue and Dixie Canyon Place, probably by bottle rockets, Collis said.
The blaze burned upward through thick brush toward Mulholland Drive and “could have been a real problem” had four water-dropping helicopters not prevented it from spreading, Collis said. The helicopters and 140 firefighters doused the blaze in just over an hour.
No structures were damaged and no one was injured in the blaze.
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