Results tagged “blue star mobile home park” from Ron Kaye L.A.

Editor's Note: Two North Valley mobile home parks were engulfed by this week's brush fires. At Sky Terrace Mobile Lodge, where residents already were under siege from a developer, dozens of homes were destroyed.

Down the raod at Blue Star Mobile Home Park, residents were luckier with several homes damaged but only one destroy. Residents had the scare of their lives, here's account of what it was like:

By Glenn Bell

Correstpondent

My wife, Jean, and I woke up at our normal time at 5 a.m. Monday morning. We enjoy our early mornings together, as we have for the 25 years of our marriage.

It was not a normal morning. We were experiencing a fire in the hills above us. Fire above Lopez and Kagel canyons is a pretty regular occurrence. Living on the edge of Los Angeles, everyone in our situation has grown used to this. But this time it was different. The smoke was much more rancid. The glow of the fire seemed nearer than in times past. 

Over the past couple of years things have changed in our neighborhood. Los Angeles County has allowed hundreds of diesel rigs to take up residence, without permits, directly up the hill from us. Because of that we have all of that truck-traffic and the pollutants that they cause driving 20 feet outside our bedroom window at all hours of the day and night. We have called the county, the city and the police many times and they will do nothing to remedy the situation. The only reason I bring this up is that this Monday morning, those trucks caused a severe and significant risk to the lives and safety of the thousands of people living below them.   

I started hearing explosions, I don't remember how many, but there were more than a dozen. So I went out to an area in front of my house to have a clear view of the hill above us. My neighbor and I watched as the truck diesel tanks exploded. As they exploded, the winds, blowing roughly 65 miles an hour, would blow the burning fuel down the hill towards our community. With every explosion I shuddered, fearing for our lives. It was the most surreal thing I have ever seen. This set into motion a series of events that will be seared into my memory forever. 

At that same time a police vehicle was traveling at a fast pace through our mobile home park, an officer was screaming into his PA system, GET OUT, GET OUT NOW, THIS IS AN IMMEDIATE AND MANDATORY EVACUATION!

Just like that, he was gone. The evacuation notice was simply a "drive-by" shout into a loudspeaker. There was no assistance offered for an orderly evacuation.

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."