These three people found themselves in a dangerous situation.
Armed with only a garden hose and a few plastic coolers filled with pool water, a Los Angeles man and two longtime surfing buddies made a desperate effort to save his family's home in a burning neighborhood. I went down a back road.
Chris Clinton, 49, was at home in a rented yurt in Topanga on January 7th when a friend called him and told him that his mother's area of Pacific Palisades was on fire. I was told to go to
I wasn't worried at first because fires in the area weren't new, but as soon as I saw a huge plume of smoke coming down the hill toward Topanga Canyon Boulevard, I realized the situation. The seriousness of hit him like a ton of bricks.
When he arrived at his childhood home, his mother, Kathy, 79, was already packing his belongings.
“Her car is full of ST. She was ready to leave…but I said no. We need to turn on all the sprinklers and hoses. And water everything down.” I intend to.”
Clinton said she grabbed a garden hose and watered as much of the house as she could and also installed sprinklers on the roof. This was a technique he learned from his father, who passed away several decades ago.
“When I was a kid, I remember my dad spraying water on everything on the roof…I was probably about eight years old. We all evacuated, but my dad stayed in the house. ” he said.
After about 15 minutes, the tap suddenly ran dry. At that point, prompted by a panicked phone call from her sister from New York, Clinton knew she had to rush out of there and get her mother to safety.
As hurricane-force winds fanned the flames and sent white-hot embers flying in every direction, he climbed into his truck and directed his mother to follow closely behind the Honda.
As they meandered their way out of the Palisades, he witnessed familiar neighborhood touchstones along the flaming route from the local church and movie theater to his alma mater.
He said the fire was at times the only source of light during the dangerous 20-minute drive. It was so hot that he feared his car would explode.
“There's no one around. There's no cars anywhere. It's pitch black outside at this point, and the only thing that's burning is this big fire. Otherwise, it's dark,” Clinton recalled. did.
“And I'm going to go slowly because my mom is behind me, so she's not scared and I don't lose her. It's scary that she's driving alone.”
When he arrived at the bottom of the hill, he said he could see fire engines and people milling around the outskirts of the neighborhood.
“So you're like, what do you mean? Why aren't they doing anything? Why aren't they there? I didn't fully understand that… All I know is that I didn't see anyone putting out the fire.”
Stay up to date with NYP's coverage of horrific fires in the Los Angeles area
They eventually arrived safely at the Venice Beach home of Clinton's friend Nimai Keston, where they spent the night. Mr. Clinton said he believed his family home would have been destroyed by now.
When a third friend, Germano Assuncao, showed up the next morning, Mr. Clinton's friends persuaded him to return to the hill to survey the damage.
“Chris was so depressed and thinking, 'Oh my god, the house might have burned down.' And I thought, there's only one way we'll know. We… I have to go…I told them if you guys don't go, I'll go alone,” Assuncao told the Post.
There, three fellow surfers braved the flames as wildfires swept through their neighborhood, gutting homes and other buildings and toppling burning utility poles onto the street.
“Everything is so eerie. The power lines are down. And we're just going up. And it's either all going up or going down,” Clinton said.
The men arrived at the Charmel Court residence just in time to extinguish several fires in the backyard and spray water on the house, which miraculously remained undamaged.
“We were so close. So close. We made it by the skin of our teeth. So close,” Clinton told the Post.
“There were a lot of little fires going on in the backyard…and I had just thrown a party for some friends, so I brought a cooler…and we just filled up water from the pool and did all this. “I'm putting out the fire,” he said.
When Assuncao, 39, and Keston noticed the back of Mr. Clinton's neighbor's house smoldering, they jumped over a fence and formed a three-person bucket brigade to put out the fire.
Asked why she risked her life to save the house her father bought for $90,000 in 1972, Clinton said she didn't see any emergency personnel in the neighborhood and was on her own. I answered that it was because I knew he was there.
“There was no one there. I don't know where everyone was. There was no one there,” he said.
Over the next few days, the water was eventually restored and access to the internet was restored after a friend of Mr. Clinton's lent him Starlink internet equipment, but the power remained out.
The men quickly snuffed out the rebel spot fire and kept an eye out for potential marauders. Mr. Assuncao and Mr. Keston eventually returned down the hill, but Mr. Clinton remained.
Now that the National Guard has swooped in, he can't go back to his house and can't leave.
He said all the houses at the bottom of the hill were destroyed, more than half of the houses in the immediate vicinity were destroyed, and only a few dozen were left unscathed.
“Most of the fires are out. I don't see any smoke right now. But it's wild to walk around…The National Guard is here. There's tanks and hammers and police everywhere.”
“This is Afghanistan…Palestine in the Pacific.”
