Firefighters saved a hilltop house from burning down Thursday as fire from a fully engulfed motorhome at the foot of the hill spread to the brush, then swept up the hillside to within 10 feet of the front porch.
The fire broke out about 12:10 p.m, on a rural property off of Bouquet Canyon Road near Texas Canyon Road, a half-mile down a private dirt road.
“We saved the house but not the mobile trailer,” Capt. Randy Gee of the Los Angeles County Fire Department said as firefighters were still positioned on the charred hillside below the ranch-style home.
The fire burned about a quarter of an acre but not the home that sits on it.
It started in a shed next to a mobile home, the type towed by another vehicle, then spread to nearby brush.
“It started to spread out here but we had Texas Canyon ANF here to help, so we were able to save the house,” Gee said, referring to U.S. Forest Service firefighters.
“We just came up the back road, there was no fire when we passed by here, nothing,” said Rand Nolan, who identified himself as a close friend of the homeowner.
“We drove around there, parked over there, and saw smoke coming up,” he said, pointing to a spot on the ridge south of the home
“I said, ‘There’s smoke coming up,’ and I got out to look and saw the carport here. It was fully involved. I said, ‘We gotta move.’”
“I said, ‘Call 911,’ and he (friend) did that. I grabbed a hose and, of course it’s on a well and I sprinkled this little bit here,” Noland said, pointing to another charred area.
Firefighters, he said, were worried about a pine tree midway up the hill, towering above the house. The brush fire, instead, burned only the ground around it, he said.
“It came up here,” Nolan said, pointing to a charred swath of hillside that led from the burned RV to the front steps of the hilltop home.
“It was hot and I couldn’t breathe,” he said, noting Thursday’s fire wasn’t the first one to threaten the house.
“About six or seven years ago, fire came and stopped 200 feet on the other side of it,” he said.
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