Teens Surrender after Setting Hollywood Hills on Fire

Satan · #1 04-01-2007, 07:51 PM

Two teens from Illinois accidentally started a 160-acre blaze in the Hollywood Hills on Friday. The fire also sent smoke over the famed Hollywood sign and threatened an apartment building. About 200 or 300 firefighters battled the fire, assisted by water-dropping helicopters, according to Ron Myers of the Los Angeles city fire department.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa held an evening news conference at Forest Lawn, where he said the blaze had been deliberately set. "They've admitted that they started this fire," Villaraigosa said of the 16- and 17-year-old boys, who voluntarily turned themselves in to Burbank police and were later taken to the LAPD's Hollywood Station.

Apparently, the two teenagers were seen setting off fireworks about 1 p.m. near the Oakwood apartments. "They were old enough to know what they were doing," said Villaraigosa, adding that the boys first told their parents about setting the fire before together calling police.

The fire spread very close to an Oakwood apartment building, stopping, due to intense precautions, to about 50 feet of its parking lot. Apartment maintenance workers wetted down the hillside and turned on sprinklers on the roof of the apartments and on the hillside. The facility is reportedly known for housing out-of-town actors looking for their big break in Hollywood.

"It's something you don't want to see in your backyard, that's for sure," said actor and apartment resident Travis Caldwell, 18, quoted by presstelegram.com. "It was nuts. It started so small and it just raced right up the hill."

The smoke caused severe discomfort for the people in the area, including the employees at the Warner Bros. studios nearby. Reports that the legendary Hollywood sign was actually threatened are false. While it was engulfed in smoke at some point, the actual fire was about a quarter mile away and across a canyon, fire officials said.

The current Hollywood sign was unveiled in 1978. The first sign was erected as an advertisement in 1923 and actually read "HOLLYWOODLAND," because it was advertising a new housing development in the hills above the Hollywood district of Los Angeles.