Trial by Fire

There were six of us sitting in the darkened living room, watching in despair as the flames flickered and flared up the coast. The smoking rails of the coral and the huge crossbeams of the Forests' house across the streets still glowed faintly through the dark, but the engines had long since abandoned the hopeless effort and gone clanging off to some other front where they were more desperately needed. The fire had disappeared over the hill, leaving only the charred grasses, and the stooped figures, silently picking their way through the smoldering ashes.

At 12:11 p.m. on October 23, 1978, a small brushfire was sighted near the Ventura Freeway in southern California on the inland side of the Santa Monica Mountains. Huge brushfires scorch this region regularly, but the five that swept through Agoura and Malibu that day and the next was a holocaust that defied previous measures. Fed by chapparal and whipped by high winds, a small fire lit by a teenage arsonist kindled into a firestorm whose heat set grasses and animals' fur ablaze a hundred yards before the flames. At 2:27 p.m.--precisely two hours and 16 minutes after the first alarm--the fire had crossed the mountains, jumped two highways and a firebreak, and burned the 10 miles to the sea. Over the next 24 hours, 700 firefighters--including 136 engine companies, 12 helicopter and aircraft squads and 28 camp crews--battled the blaze. When it was over by late afternoon only one human life was lost but the toil was still staggering. It included:

--25,000 acres burned:

--197 homes destroyed and 27 damaged;

--254 miscellaneous structures destroyed;

--233 vehicles, 33 mobile homes and 8 private water tanks destroyed;

--27 dogs and 43 horses dead;

--120-150 exotic animals killed.

At 2 p.m. on that gusty Friday, however, we could not anticipate the disaster's magnitude.

I was 20 miles south of home in Santa Monica when I got the news. I was taking the bus back from an afternoon class at UCLA. Accustomed to hearing news of such fires. I was intermittently daydreaming and listening to the news reports on the Mandeville Canyon fire, which had been raging since noon of the previous day. Suddenly, an account of another blaze came on. The words "Kanan Dume"--a road near us--cut through my reverie. Startled, I waited for elaboration and when none came glanced instinctively up the coast for the telltale black smudge on the horizon, Dark clouds billowed from Mandeville Canyon five miles away, but beyond that, the sky was only a crystal blue.

When I got off at the library to change buses I nevertheless called home. My father, who miraculously had taken the day off, answered.

"Where are you?" he demanded.

I told him and mentioned something about a fire.

"It's on three sides of us and creeping up on the Forrests' now. I've got to go," he said.

Quickly we made contingency plans. There would be roadblocks on the way back and quite likely the bus would be stopped as far down as the Colony. If so, I would walk the 10 miles home along the beach.

I didn't need to ask where I would find my family. As 15-year residents of Malibu we were old timers and had been through two major brushfires before. I knew they would stay at the house until the end.

People behave in odd and unaccountable ways during fires. Such holocausts can still instill strange hilarity in some, or make even the most trained and disciplined person break down. One of our neighbors--another old-timer--served cocktails on the veranda as the fire crept over the hill. Another nearby resident, an experienced stewardess, drove while-eyed and panic-stricken down the hill in the family's only car, leaving her husband, her daughter and her horses stranded in the path of the oncoming flames.

Tragically, in the strangely interrelated world of a firestorm, the terror or inexperience of one person often affects another. One resident who lived up the hill from us turned on all the faucets and hoses in his house, then filed with the fire still miles away. Although the firestorm did not engulf his home, a burning cinder carried on the wind came through an open window, and all the water in his basins did nothing. With no one there to extinguish the spark, his house was gutted. And his open faucets so dropped the water pressure that when Mr. Forest climbed on his roof-hose in hand to battle the flames, no water would come out. His house burned to the ground before I got home.

Terror reigned on the beach. Highway blockades stopped the bus two miles from my house, and I hiked the last stretch of cold, damp sand, with my pants rolled up. The beach was thronged with people--screaming and shouting or talking in barely audible whispers. It was crowded with horses and dogs, children and mothers. On the other side of the road, the cliffs were ablaze and a strong, hot wind blew cinders and smoke, turning the palm trees into flaming torches and sending crowds scurrying to the water's edge. There were fathers looking for children, children looking for pets. It was impossible to see through the wall of flame and smoke and everyone was sure their house was gone. Like sinners in the inferno, they ran in circles, blown by the winds, while lifeguards patrolled the beach to insure that in the hysteria, none ran back into the flames.

By that time, they had sealed off all roads to the flaming interior to all but emergency crews. But I hitched a ride with a compassionate county worker and came home. Our house was still standing, a fortified bastion.

My father's words shocked everyone

"In a way it's beautiful," he said.

He had risen and stood in the center of the room, looking first toward the ocean, then toward the hills. I looked and felt sick Beautiful. There was fire on three sides with only the stretch straight down to the on can still clear. A row of homes on the beach were ablaze and the towering flames reflecting off the water had given the ocean a hellish glow. A blanket of putrid smoke obscured the moon, but the roaring inferno and glaring searchlights of the firefighters lit the coast five miles away. I knew that when the fire finally went out. It would leave a great scorched scar across the landscape.

All that night, we intermittently watched and fought the flames. The forrests home was long since gone lost the moment living cinders ignited the gas. But the house being built next to it could still be saved, living wet handkerchiefs around out months, we grabbed spades and shovels and with our neighbors battled back the blazing brush.

It was an cerie fight: As we worked cottontails, their coasts ablaze darted out of the burning grasses. A steady stream of flashing lights came down the highway and every few minutes helicopters skimmed overhead to land in the empty field by the market. In the distance like far-off bombs--we could hear mobile homes exploding as their gas tanks caught fire.

We were not able to extinguish the flames, but we diverted them from the house. Then there was nothing to do but wait.

The wet handkerchiefs we had tired around our months had lone since dried out and stiffened. Our clothes racked of smoke and sweat, and out eyes were still red from the ash, but no one moved of spoke it word. We sat transfixed by the flames.

All that might, and on into the next day, helicopters and planes flew overhead, dropping water and chemical retardants on the blaze. Although some 700 men were spread out along the length of the fire, its sheet magnitude made even this massive effort miniscule. Wherever resistance was weak and the fire could slip through, tales of tragedy emerged one of the saddest was that of the exotic animal farm in Newbury Park. When the owners of the farm realized the fire was closing in and they could not get the animals out, they opened all the cages. But few of the rare animals escaped. Among the some 580 dead animals found after the fire were four monkeys, 29 kangaroos and seven flamas.

Around noon on Saturday, October 24, a caravan of 50 fire engines wound its way down the coast from San Francisco. But by that time the winds had changed, blowing the fire back on itself. It was the only thing that could have stopped the flames.

Someone touched my arm and said that the fire hail turned. I looked out.

The palm tree torches made a line of-flaming sentinels on the beach. Over the helicopter landing pad rose on cerie, incandescent glow. The ridgelines were faced with fire: the canyons were aglow with flame, but the winds had changed, and in the flickering burning grass. I thought I saw a touch of splendor.