Fires Los Angeles

Two rival gang members were killed and three others wounded early Wednesday morning in a bloody shoot-out that erupted just eight blocks from the Los Angeles Coliseum, spraying bullets over a residential block in Southwest Los Angeles, police said. More than 50 shots were fired in the gun battle that killed 17-year-old Edward Cory Brown, said Los Angeles Police Department spokesman Lt. Robert Kimball.

Marshaling engines and manpower from across the county, the Los Angeles Fire Department found itself battling not just a high-rise fire early Saturday but at least five different kinds of wind-scattered fires that skipped and jumped across the upscale Westside neighborhood.

Fire investigators were focusing Sunday on the possibility that arson was the cause of a series of disastrous blazes that raced through a Westwood neighborhood and became one of the city's worst-ever residential fire incidents. "I would approach it as a criminal" matter, said one investigator, who asked not to be identified.

A pre-dawn blaze near Downtown Los Angeles early Monday partially gutted a hotel that has a history of serious fire and health violations, sending transients living inside scrambling for safety through flames and thick, black smoke. The fire was the third in the past five months at the five-story Californian Hotel, which city officials say is a classic slum building where a changing cast of owners suck out profits, fail to make repairs and leave tenants in miserable conditions.

A deadly explosion and fire turned a weathered Hollywood apartment building--which less than a year ago was riddled with fire safety violations--into a chaotic inferno early Thursday. Two residents died and at least six people, including two children and four firefighters, were injured. Within minutes of receiving a 3:41 a.m. emergency call, firefighters arrived at the four-story Palomar Hotel at 5473 Santa Monica Blvd.

Nothing made sense that night, so firefighter Tom Carroll really wasn't surprised when he spotted the dark Chevy Blazer, perhaps a Ford Bronco, darting past him on the right. Carroll was perched on a seat at the rear of a hook-and-ladder, steering the tail of the 52-foot-long behemoth as it raced with siren wailing through the flaming chaos of Western Avenue. Up ahead, looters and spectators ran wildly in the intersection at Western and 31st Street.

Firefighters discovered the body of a man hogtied and rigged with explosives in a Harbor Gateway apartment, authorities said Wednesday. The body, covered and lying next to a material resembling dynamite, was discovered early Tuesday after firefighters extinguished flames in the walkway and living room of the third-floor apartment, said Los Angeles Police Detective Larry Kallestad. Authorities suspect that the man was murdered and had been dead at least a day.

Two children and two adults remained hospitalized Thursday as investigators sought to determine the cause of a fire that erupted in a Hollywood high-rise building and briefly trapped about 30 people--some of them on the roof. By 8 a.m. Thursday, more than 10 hours after flames swept the ninth floor of the 14-story Cahuenga Sunset Building, employees were allowed to re-enter two radio stations, the Los Angeles bureau of Cable News Network and numerous entertainment industry offices.

Fires set in several trash cans and bins at Van Nuys High School on Friday night spread to a student store and caused about $15,000 in damage, according to Los Angeles Fire Department officials. Thirty firefighters arrived just before midnight at 6535 Cedros Ave., said Brian Humphrey, a Fire Department spokesman. There were no injuries, and the fire was extinguished in 35 minutes.

The smell of smoke still hung in the air above the charred apartment Sunday as conflicting stories swept through Jordan Downs. Like many things in the sprawling public housing project, the talk reflected the tensions between blacks and Latinos. Early Saturday morning, some men doused the apartment with gasoline and set off an inferno. Four people died, and 2-year-old Veronica Lopez was severely burned. The family blamed black drug dealers, who they said ran away.