Fire Rips Through Vacated Saddleback Inn In Santa Ana
SANTA ANA (CBS) — A fire severely damaged the former Saddleback Inn in Santa Ana Monday night, but there were no reports of anyone in the vacant building at the time.
Firefighters responded to the fire with multiple ladder trucks and used water cannons to shoot streams of water at flames that tore through the structure's roof, according to Santa Ana Fire Department dispatchers and reports from the scene.
The fire, which was reported at 10:13 p.m., burned for more than one hour and gutted a portion of the structure
in the 1600 block of East 1st Street.
For two decades the Saddleback Inn was one of Santa Ana's major business hotels from the 1960s to the 1980s.
In 1987, Saddleback Inn-Santa Ana Ltd., a Los Angeles investor group including financier-developer David Murdock and H.R. Haldeman, a chief of staff in the Nixon administration, sold the inn to a group headed by its builder, Bruce Gelker, who previously owned the hotel from 1964 to 1984.
More recently, the hotel offered extended-stay leasing and was home to scores of fixed-income and low-income residents.
Last February residents received eviction notices, according to the Orange County Register. The notices reportedly stemmed in part from a dispute between the property owner and the city over the hotel's zoning and permits that landed in criminal court.
There were no immediate reports of injuries in the fire.
