Roger Kelly had been up through the night, watching the orange glow emanating from the hillside above his home of 30 years.
The Seminole Springs mobile home park, a co-op of 215 small lakeside homes tucked into the canyon between Malibu and Agoura Hills, was on the warpath of the most destructive fire to ever hit Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
By the early morning on Friday last week, flames were quickly billowing toward them.
“The way the smoke was coming you just knew it was on the other side of the hill and about to jump,” he say. His wife was ready with essentials packed. “I never thought we would burn here,” he said. “So, I just grabbed my surfboard” and left many other possessions behind.
But before the day was through on Friday, half the neighborhood would be gone, leveled into ash and metal, foundations and car-frames.
Referred to as a “hidden gem” by those who live there, most outsiders – even southern California locals – didn’t know the Seminole Springs neighborhood existed until an aerial view of the Woolsey fire caught by a local TV helicopter showed what was left behind.
Roughly 100 small homes, which had once been closely clustered together in the canyon, had been reduced to rubble.
Lots of people here consider one another family.
That’s why the broadcast footage haunted residents. “I probably looked at that screenshot 100 times trying to figure out [who was spared],” Kelly said. “I could see my neighbor’s house, but I couldn’t really see mine. It was killing us, my wife and I.”
By Saturday the president of the park had called – his home was safe. But in a tight-knit community like this, the relief couldn’t be fully felt, as neighbors suffered.
“I didn’t know my place was there for sure, until I saw it with my own eyes,” he said, explaining why he evaded blockades set by the authorities and returned to the evacuated area over the weekend. “We came over the little hill and I saw it and … I couldn’t believe it. I got so overwhelmed with emotion. Just to see all the devastation.”
Most members of the mobile home park, which was built in 1969, had lived there for years, raising their families together. It was the kind of place no one wants to leave, once they snag a spot. Initially constructed as a senior community, over the last few decades Seminole had begun to welcome families with children and recently, the 215 units were filled by a mixture of old and young.
The Seminole Springs website shows brightly colored kayaks adorning the shore, trails that lead past the lake into the green hillsides overlooking the community. There’s a pool, a BBQ area, and a lounge.
“It was a gem,” Kelly said. “And it will be again. We hope.”
Kelly adds: “In my opinion because we are a community of 215 families and homes –and we have been here for 40 years – we should have been a priority, rather than saving the big fancy homes built way in the middle of nowhere.”
The Woolsey fire, which is still burning across more than 97,620 acres near Malibu in southern California, is 47% contained after six days of an around-the-clock firefight.
The Los Angeles county fire chief, Daryl Osby, said the battle against this giant blaze, which has now scorched an area larger than the city of Denver, has been the most difficult he’s seen in his 35-year career.
So far, it has consumed more than 435 structures, a number officials say is likely to rise as damage crews finish their assessments.
“I feel bad that we lost any homes,” Osby told the Guardian. Though he didn’t know the specifics of the Seminole Springs fire, he said it was something he would assess in the coming months when officials study the fire’s progression.
“We did the best we could,” he adds, emphasizing that their teams had to use the limited resources they had to focus on saving lives. “I think we were successful at that objective, preventing death. Unfortunately, it was at the expense of people’s homes.”
‘We all have to lean on each other’
Carol Ornelas’s home was perhaps the last one that burned before the fire moved past the neighborhood. She lived in one of the few decimated houses in the lower-part of the park. Her three best friends, who live in the upper-part of Seminole Springs, all lost their homes.
“We all moved there to be in the same place. But now it’s unbelievable,” she said. “Usually, if something terrible happens to one of your friends you can all rally to help that person – but it is all four of us.”
Now she is resting with a friend and trying not to focus on the negatives. Ornelas had just moved her 94-year-old mother into an assisted living facility, and had recently brought all her family’s keepsakes to her Seminole Springs unit. She and her husband, a drummer, also had the only photo of him playing for Sonny and Cher hanging on the wall. Nothing could be recovered from the wreckage.
“They are just things,” she said, “but they are things that we absolutely can never replace. Things that are not valuable so to speak, but they are the things I wanted to have forever. That’s the worst part – losing the things you can’t replace.”
‘It seemed like they would better protect us’
Houston Waye, a new resident who moved into Seminole Springs in February, left on Thursday evening to ensure his wife, animals, and two-year-old baby were out safely, but he returned on Friday afternoon, avoiding blocked roads by hiking in through a back route. In the first scramble to get out, he’d barely brought any of his own things. “I had two dogs, a cat, a tortoise and a two-year-old,” he said.
By the time he returned, most of the damage was done. But he and others worked to ensure the smoldering patches wouldn’t reignite. The homes on the edge, between the line of saved homes and burned ones, were ablaze when he arrived. Waye and a neighbor who stayed through the ordeal used hoses to put them out.
“This will bring out the best in a lot of people,” their neighbor Brandon Rubin said, calling helpful residents heroes. His was one of the homes still standing, but as someone who both grew up in Seminole Springs and who returned to live there with his girlfriend, receiving the news was “one of the most bittersweet things you can imagine”, he said.
“There are faces to all those homes that you see gone,” he said. “Close to 100 homes were lost. That is a lot of people in trouble. ”
But, he is certain they will rebuild – and they will do it together.
“Like any community it’s not perfect. But we all love each other. We are all there for each other,” he said, adding: “the stuff is gone. But we are here. We are strong people and we are going to get through it – together.”
