The fire engulfed a towering residential project, raining ash on much of downtown Los Angeles and lighting the predawn sky a smoky orange. Computers and cubicles melted in neighboring buildings. Hundreds of thick windows cracked. Palm trees were ignited. Intense heat damaged fiber-optic cables beneath a downtown freeway and melted one of the signs. Homeless people were roused from their sleep blocks away. Maria Joya, 54, woke up beneath an underpass of the 110 Freeway to feel her bare feet suddenly baking hot. She said she leaped from her blanket to see "a tower of fire." She screamed to her neighbors to wake up. "There were tongues of fire," she said. "I just...
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