The fire has passed the Sylmar area where the Blue Star Mobile Home Park is located and Glenn and Jean Bell were able to return and find their manufactured home suffered serious damage but was not destroyed.
One home was destroyed and several others damaged but the toll at Sky Terrace Mobile Lodge to the east was serious: About 40 of the 57 homes were destroyed.
Bell said it was a nightmare getting out of Blue Star as the fire roared around the park where there's 186 homes. More than 300 vehicles jammed up trying to get out the single exit onto Gladstone Avenue until residents finally broke the lock on an emergency gate and left onto Paxton Street.
He described how the wind from the fire blew his cap off and it was completely in flames by the time it hit the ground.
"We were lucky," he said. "We thought it would be a lot worse."
One home was destroyed and several others damaged but the toll at Sky Terrace Mobile Lodge to the east was serious: About 40 of the 57 homes were destroyed.
Bell said it was a nightmare getting out of Blue Star as the fire roared around the park where there's 186 homes. More than 300 vehicles jammed up trying to get out the single exit onto Gladstone Avenue until residents finally broke the lock on an emergency gate and left onto Paxton Street.
He described how the wind from the fire blew his cap off and it was completely in flames by the time it hit the ground.
"We were lucky," he said. "We thought it would be a lot worse."
Ron Kaye is the former editor of the Los Angeles Daily News where he spent 23 years helping to make the newspaper the voice of the San Fernando Valley and fighting for a city government that serves the people and not special interests.
Twice in recent years, Los Angeles Magazine listed Kaye among the city’s most influential people, specifically in the area of politics. Kaye has been variously described in the media as the “accidental anarchist,” “the Patrick Henry of the San Fernando Valley” and a “passionate populist.” He is now committed to
carrying on his crusade for a greater Los Angeles as an ordinary citizen. Previously, Ron worked at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner,
Associated Press, Cleveland Plain Dealer and The Australian as well as papers
in Fairbanks, Alaska and Yakima, Wash. He also wrote for Newsweek magazine, The Guardian in London and the National Enquirer.
The Sky Terrace Mobile Lodge sits on top of the closed Russell Moe Landfill. This landfill generates highly explosive, highly flammable methane gas and contains carcinogenic chemicals. If anything good comes out of this fire it is that residents are relocated to a healthier, safer environment.