Neighbors on Christmas Tree Lane battled California wildfire two buckets at a time Reuters

By Chad Terhune

ALTADENA, Calif. (Reuters) – As embers began to rain down on Altadena last week, Jason Salit sent his wife and two children off to college.

The 60-year-old technology consultant vowed to evacuate as well if Eaton (NYSE: ) The fire escalated. “I don’t want to die here either,” he assured his wife and their children. “I’ll stay here and see what I can do.”

His first neighbor and friend of 20 years, Billy Malone, didn’t stick around. But the 63-year-old restaurant supervisor and his wife Nina didn’t get far as they drove down the hillside before dawn on Wednesday January 8.

Within minutes, a burning car rolled past him with an elderly man trapped inside. The couple and another bystander pulled him out seconds before the car exploded. Malone drove the man to a nearby shelter, and he and his wife went to a friend’s house.

Salit sprayed his house and yard on Santa Rosa Avenue with a garden hose. The idyllic street, known as Christmas Tree Lane, is a historic landmark and attracts thousands of people every year to see the tall deodar cedar trees decorated with lights.

Salit was afraid that the floating embers would ignite the treetops. Shortly after 5am, his gut dried up, extinguishing any hope of defending himself from the raging firestorm.

When the defeat came, Salit went inside and sobbed. He walked through his house and said his goodbyes, taking family photos and other memories on his phone just before 6 a.m. His house is a century old and has been in his family since the 1950s.

Salit took a deep breath. His house hadn’t burned down yet, and he had a swimming pool and two small, white buckets in the yard. “Let’s give him a chance,” he recalls thinking.

He thought about how to save his house and the neighboring house that was already on fire. “The math was one bin for my building and one for my neighbor’s house. Then there was one for my roof, one for my siding and then one for them,” he said.

Salit could not save that neighbor’s house, but he tried to limit the spread. Still, it was no match for the flames that leapt onto the metal shed. The fire was only a few meters away from Salit’s backyard garage.

On Wednesday around 8 o’clock, he threw buckets of water on the fire, but the heat was too great.

Thirty minutes later the smoke cleared and a blue sky appeared. Salit had no idea that it was day. “That gave me hope. Maybe someone will come,” he said. For good luck, Salit squeezed a small, knitted pickle in his pocket, a Christmas gift from his daughter.

An ear-splitting explosion shattered this fleeting moment of peace. A propane tank broke through another neighbor’s house and ignited a 70-foot (21-meter) eucalyptus tree and a power pole. A tree or pole could crush his car or prevent his escape if they fell. His phone read 8:46 a.m. and Salit gave him 15 minutes.

By 9 a.m., the pole and tree were no longer burning. “Okay, back to business with the bucket,” he said.

THE BUCKETS ARE CALLED “SALVATION” AND “MERCY”

The fire raced through nearby houses, leaving entire blocks destroyed. By 11 a.m., the houses behind Malone’s neighboring yard were fully engulfed, and flames were licking at his wooden garage.

Salit sent a sad news to his friend. Malone replied, “Are you still there?”

Yes, Salit told him. Malone grabbed his keys and started back to Altadena.

Meanwhile, Salit punched a four-foot (1.2-meter) hole in Malone’s fence to gain access to his friend’s property right next to his pool. Then he placed a ladder there.

For almost an hour he climbed the ladder and first swung his two buckets through the hole. He then crawled in and extinguished the flames engulfing Malone’s garage, a children’s playhouse and two citrus trees.

Malone was stunned to see the front of his house intact when he arrived an hour later, around noon. “Jason single-handedly saved our house,” Malone said.

Salit beamed at the sight of reinforcements. “Thank God Billy came because I was pretty spent,” he said.

Now Salit filled the buckets and handed them to Malone through the fence. Salit was thinking of names for his lifeboats in his mind. “I named my buckets. One is Salvation and the other is Mercy,” he said.

Together, those buckets helped contain the fire and the situation appeared to be under control by late Wednesday afternoon. Both Salit’s and Malone’s houses were spared major damage.

Salit paused and plopped down in a chair in his home office. He called his family around 5 p.m. to tell them the good news. “I think we’re done and Billy’s here.”

Then Salit straightened up at the shrill sound of the saw. Following (LON:) door, the firemen were entering the shed that Salit had put out earlier. The structure continued to smolder, and Salit and Malone assumed that firefighters wanted to let more air in to make it burn faster.

The fire crew left and the shed burst into flames 10 feet (3 meters) high, just feet (meters) from Salit’s garage. “Jason saved our house, and now we’re trying to save his,” Malone said.

Malone’s wife and two other neighbors joined the bucket brigade, which lasted another two hours. At night, Malone and Salit patrolled the block every hour to detect any threats. At 3 a.m. Thursday, Salit ran across the street to put out a fresh fire. A policeman passing by shined a flashlight in his face. “Are you okay?”

For both men, not really. “We’re safe, but no, we’re not well,” Malone said. “At my friend’s house across the street, that’s where my daughter first looked for eggs in his yard. Nothing was left. That’s the history of our family.” He was amazed that most of the cedar trees survived, while the homes did not.

Salit said: “Mornings are brutal for me. So much is out of order. You look outside and it’s like a horror show.”

They find comfort and humor in each other as they live side by side without electricity or running water. They joke about repurposing toilet refill buckets so they can flush. And Salit has even bigger plans for plastic tubs.

“I love these bins,” he said. “I want to bronze them.”