Los Angeles County Fire Department officials responded to a small vegetation fire that broke out in the backyard of a Canyon Country home Friday.
The call came in at approximately 3:40 p.m. at the corner of Aumond Avenue and Aldbury Street.
“My neighbor came to the door and showed me the brush was burning,” said Carol Rock, who lives next door to the house where the fire erupted. “So I turned on my garden hose so I could protect our property.”
“I was coaching down at Canyon High, when a group of my kids and I smelled smoke … I looked up and I saw black smoke near pretty close to where I live,” said Frank Rock, Carol’s husband, who then said he told his pole vault athletes to pack up because he needed to head home. “I parked over here and checked to see if my wife was alright, but she was already on scene trying to help keep our house wet.”
The fire had grown to be a 50-foot-by-50-foot spot fire in the rear of the house and had spread to the fence by the time Los Angeles County Fire Department personnel arrived on the scene, according to Fire Inspector Sky Cornell. “No structures were damaged, just the fence.”
Knockdown was announced at 4:04 p.m. by Engine 128’s crew, according to Cornell.
“The crews on scene said they could handle and they canceled the assignment,” the fire inspector said.
Noting that his Canyon Country neighborhood was no stranger to the dangers of vegetation fires, Rock added that the first thing that came to mind was that if the Fire Department had not arrived as quickly as they had then “the whole neighborhood would’ve gone up.”
Officials as of 5:20 p.m. had not yet announced if they determined the cause of the fire, or if they had taken any responsible parties into custody.
