The dramatic Sunday blaze that destroyed portions of the Universal Studios Hollywood back lot was accidentally touched off by company employees using a blowtorch to heat asphalt roofing shingles, authorities said.
Los Angeles County fire officials said two workers and a supervisor were putting up shingles in an alley on the New York Street set. They finished at 3 a.m., spent an hour watching for any sign of fire, then took a break.
At 4:43 a.m., just as the crew was returning, a security guard saw flames and reported the fire.
The studio's theme park and adjacent CityWalk reopened Monday as the Los Angeles County Fire Department launched what Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman promised would be a "stem to stern" examination of the water pressure problems that hampered the attack on the three-alarm blaze, which destroyed back lot sets, a video library and the "King Kong" attraction.
"The big question right now is trying to compare water available on site, off site and in the system itself with the amount of fire that the first arriving units were confronted with," Freeman said.
When the first fire engine arrived from a station on the Universal grounds four minutes after the blaze was reported, the New York Street sets were already engulfed in flames, Freeman said.
"About the equivalent of a city block of fire" greeted the first firefighters, he said. Fire officials said Sunday that some firefighters could only get 10-foot sprays from their hoses, and county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said water was coming out of hoses anemically.
It is unclear, Freeman said Monday, whether a heavy-duty sprinkler system installed after a 1990 back lot fire in the same area affected the water pressure. But commanders told Freeman that they had to draw water from studio ponds and run hoses to hydrants off the studio lot in the early stages of fighting the fire.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power supplies Universal with water from surrounding mains. Agency Public Affairs Director Joe Ramallo said the DWP system was supplying adequate water during the fire. But Universal, like many large commercial sites, operates and maintains its own water system once lines come on to its property.
"You're limited by the system in place on the grounds and if it's not sufficient, you can't do any more on our side," Ramallo said. "We did everything we could to increase pressure on our end, but we were very limited because it's a private system."
