Family in Deadly Fire Removed Sole Alarm

The only smoke alarm in the house where Donald Ybarra and his three young sons died in a fast-moving blaze was broken and had been removed shortly before the fire, his wife told authorities.

Fire investigators combing through the blackened ruins of the Placentia home said Wednesday that the detector was found on the top of a dresser in a bedroom, where Melodie Ybarra last remembered seeing it.

“We found it exactly where she said it was,” said Bill Crow, a case investigator for the Orange County Fire Authority who has interviewed Ybarra twice.

Ybarra, who escaped Monday night’s fire with second-degree burns, told officials that the alarm was removed this month from a wall outside the two upstairs bedrooms where her sons slept.

The boys--Brandon, 7, Connor, 4, and Jacob, 2--died along with their dad as flames engulfed their home too quickly for neighbors and firefighters to rescue them.

Many municipal building codes require at least one smoke detector and sometimes additional ones for new homes, depending on their size and layout, said Capt. Stephen J. Miller, a spokesman for the Orange County Fire Authority. And older homes must be brought up to code when they are sold.

But the agency has the jurisdiction to inspect and enforce only in apartments and businesses; it lacks such jurisdiction over private homes, Miller said.

At the Ybarra home Wednesday, more than a dozen investigators were re-interviewing witnesses and canvassing the charred shell of the house on Joan Way as they searched for clues about how the fire started and why it spread so swiftly. They worked under tents at a makeshift command center set up in the middle of the cul-de-sac. “They’re still working diligently to find a cause,” Miller said. “We’ve got every available investigator working on it.”

Officials believe the fire may have started in the living room or adjacent kitchen, given the extent of damage to those areas. They have yet to find any flammable materials that may have acted as an accelerant, Crow said.

Investigators are also trying to determine where in the house Donald Ybarra was when the fire started. His wife has told investigators and friends that she had gone to bed and that as far as she knew, her husband was alone in the living room watching television.

“We’re going to have to keep putting the puzzle together,” Crow said. “Right now, the timeline makes huge S-turns.”

Neighbors searching for answers themselves occasionally milled beyond the police tape, some staring silently and others sobbing. Flowers, candles and toys were lined up at the foot of a chain-link fence put up by investigators.

Word that the Ybarras had no working smoke detectors spread quickly along Joan Way and nearby streets. Many families say they’ve been scrambling to make sure their homes have them.

“It’s a life-and-death decision,” Crow said. “Over and over again, [smoke detectors] prove how successful they are. Even if it buys 20 more seconds, it could be enough to save you.”

Michelle Bishop, a friend of the Ybarras who lives across the street with her three young children, said her house had only one detector before Monday’s fire: downstairs, near her and her husband’s bedroom. On Tuesday, her husband installed two more alarms, putting them upstairs where the kids sleep and where the furnace is. He also bought four more to put up around the home. “If there’s anything we can learn from this,” Bishop said, cradling her infant daughter, “it’s that smoke detectors are definitely important.”

Funeral arrangements for Donald Ybarra and the children are pending, but a memorial fund has been established at the McAulay Wallace Mortuary, 902 N. Harbor Blvd., Fullerton CA 92832. Information: (714) 525-4721.