SOMETIMES, IT'S ONLY A MOVIE.

Byline: Eugene Tong Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA - An emergency call sent county firefighters and paramedics racing toward what the caller thought was a small plane crash in the canyons last week near Vasquez Canyon Road and Mystery Mesa Drive.

It turned out to be a movie stunt test for Steven Spielberg's film version of H.G. Wells' ``War of the Worlds,'' starring Tom Cruise.

``There was a pyrotechnic test,'' said Steve MacDonald, president of the Entertainment Industry Development Corp., the prime film permitting agency in Los Angeles County, though it was not involved in the production.

``The problem was the film unit is a different unit than the regular fire station. There may be miscommunication between the two units.''

Even in a community as familiar with film production as Santa Clarita, miscommunication and eager trouble spotters can sometimes muster fire and other emergency teams to these false alarms.

Though they're rare, Jason Crawford of the city's film office has recalled several instances over the years where bystanders mistook movie action with public menace.

``There have been times when they're shooting a robbery scene, and someone would call in a report to the police,'' he said.

Still, with hundreds of films and television shows in production throughout the county on any given day, these incidents are rare.

``Last summer, we had two military fighter jets fly down the L.A. River in low elevation - this was for the television show '24' - that went off without a hitch,'' MacDonald said. ``It's a combination of there's more filming done in L.A. so people are more used to it, and it's the amount of work we go through to update people.''

City and county filming rules require on-set monitoring from fire crews if the shoot involves any sort of pyrotechnics, stunts or special effects. The Los Angeles County Fire Department has a special film unit that staffs entertainment productions and notifies dispatchers of scheduled stunts. The EIDC also issues community notification guidelines.

``We do have a notification process in place to prevent that from occurring during any kind of pyrotechnics,'' said Capt. Mark Savage, a Los Angeles County Fire Department spokesman. ``Still, there are occasions that someone might call and report a completely different location, or the information isn't put together - there are so many people with cell phones out there.''

In last week's incident, a person on the roof of a building spotted what the caller thought was a crash, then dialed 911. Dispatchers tend to err on the side of caution.

``There may be 20 phone calls that are received on something,'' Savage said. ``If someone's not paying super close attention and reporting something a mile a way from where the movie shoot is, we do send a response team.

``We just have to investigate all reports whenever they occur. The last thing you want is if there's a house fire in the next canyon over, and we don't send resources.''

Eugene Tong, [phone]

eugene.tong(at)dailynews.com