About a dozen residents of Maurice Avenue on the north end of an island of La Crescenta homes known as Briggs Terrace found themselves in the middle of the street late Saturday, taking stock of their situation.
They were surrounded by fire on three sides, and there were no firefighters or law enforcement in sight. Someone asked a question that was on everyone’s mind: Is anybody leaving? All shook their heads reports the Los Angeles Times.
The evacuation order had come after nightfall for the Briggs Terrace area, a collection of century-old Craftsman and cabin-style homes, along with newer stucco homes.
“We started thinking smart and came up with a plan,” said Greg Lievense, 54, an engineer at the nearby Jet Propulsion Laboratory. One neighbor began stockpiling ladders and flashlights. The group organized into three-member teams and agreed no one would be alone through the emergency.
“We broke up into ‘ember shifts’ ” Lievense said, with each group taking turns peering into the eaves and backyards of their neighbors, searching for glowing embers or flames and responding if possible.
They developed an emergency signal — three long honks of a car horn — which would mean that a home was on fire or that they would all have to leave, he said.
In Acton, Altadena, La Crescenta and La Cañada Flintridge, many residents whose neighborhoods were under mandatory evacuation orders because of the Station fire weighed a tough choice: Should they heed officials’ demands to evacuate, leave with their children, pets and valuables and hope that firefighters would defend their homes should the flames get too close? Or should they stay and try, somehow, to defend their homes?
At a news conference Sunday afternoon, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger cautioned that even considering such a decision was wrong-headed. “They would not tell you to evacuate if it is not necessary,” he said of the sheriff’s deputies who had been issuing evacuation orders by automated phone calls and in person.
Schwarzenegger tried to underline the risks that holdouts could face. He said that three people injured Saturday in Big Tujunga Canyon had placed themselves in harm’s way because they had not heeded evacuation orders.
“Three people got burned and really badly injured because they did not listen,” the governor said.
Steve Whitmore, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, said two of the injured people thought that they could protect themselves by jumping into a hot tub. But when 80- to 100-foot flames came roaring through their neighborhood, both were seriously burned and had to be airlifted to a nearby hospital. Whitmore said he did not have information on the third person.
When an evacuation order is issued, Whitmore said, it is important to “go, and go now. You don’t have several hours to wait any more.”
But not everyone agreed. In Acton, where evacuation orders were issued Saturday night, nearly half the community’s 2,300 residents decided to stay behind, said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Capt. Christy Guyovich. She said that sheriff’s officials lacked the legal authority to arrest people who disregarded evacuation orders.
Read more here: Some residents in burn areas ignore orders to evacuate