Altadena, Los Angeles, is home to a picturesque street known as Christmas Tree Lane, a historic landmark that attracts thousands of visitors each holiday season to admire the dazzling tall spruce trees adorned with lights. Last Tuesday, as embers from the Eaton Fire began to drift into the area, Jason Salit, a 60-year-old tech consultant, sent his wife and child away and decided to stay behind alone, determined to see what he could do to help.
According to Reuters, Billy Malone, Salit’s neighbor and friend of 20 years, evacuated with his wife early Wednesday morning to seek shelter at a friend’s house. However, just minutes after heading downhill, the 63-year-old restaurant manager encountered a burning car. The Malone couple and another passerby managed to drag the elderly driver out just seconds before the car exploded, rushing him to a nearby shelter.
Throughout the night, Salit sprayed his house and yard on Santa Rosa Street with a garden hose, fearing that the drifting embers would ignite the crowns of the spruce trees. Shortly after 5 a.m., the water hose ran dry, extinguishing all of his hopes of fighting off the inferno. With tears in his eyes, he entered his house to bid farewell, capturing family photos and other memorabilia on his phone before 6 a.m. This house had been in his family since the 1950s.
Taking a deep breath, Salit, seeing that the house had not caught fire yet, thought, “Let’s give it a fighting chance.” He remembered the backyard swimming pool and two white buckets, hastily calculating in his mind how to save his own house and a neighboring house that was already on fire. Ultimately, Salit couldn’t save the neighbor’s house but managed to contain the spread of the fire.
The flames crept closer to Salit’s backyard garage, and around 8 a.m. on Wednesday, he continued to douse the flames with water, struggling against the intense heat. As smoke cleared and blue skies appeared about 30 minutes later, Salit suddenly realized it was daytime. “This gave me hope that maybe someone would come,” he decided to wait.
However, a deafening explosion shattered the calm as a propane tank flew out from a nearby residence, igniting a 70-foot tall eucalyptus tree and utility poles. If the tree or utility poles fell, they could crush Salit’s car and impede his escape. At 8:46 a.m., Salit decided to evacuate in 15 minutes. By 9 a.m., the utility poles and tree were no longer burning. Altering his decision, he resumed using buckets to fetch water from the pool to douse the flames.
The fire quickly spread to nearby homes, with the entire neighborhood being devastated. By 11 a.m., the back house of Malone’s friends was completely engulfed in flames, with fire closing in on their wooden garage. Salit sent a text message to Malone to deliver the grim news. Upon hearing that Salit was still at home, Malone grabbed his keys and returned to Altadena.
Meanwhile, Salit managed to smash a four-foot hole in the fence and set up a ladder on Malone’s property within an hour. Putting out the flames directed at Malone’s garage, children’s playhouse, and two citrus trees, luckily located near his swimming pool. Malone arrived around that time, astonished to see his front house untouched. He remarked, “Jason single-handedly saved our house.”
Exhausted, Salit smiled upon seeing reinforcements. The two worked together, with Salit filling water buckets and passing them through the fence to Malone. “I’ve named the buckets. One is called Saving, and the other is called Grace,” he said. By late afternoon on the 8th, the situation seemed under control, with neither Salit’s nor Malone’s houses suffering major damage.
Taking a break, Salit sat in his home office chair. Around 5 p.m., he called his family to share the good news. “I think we’re done. Billy’s here,” he said before straightening up at the sound of sawing from next door. Firefighters were cutting the shed that Salit had previously extinguished. The shed had been smoldering, and they speculated that cutting it would allow more air in to burn it down completely.
After the firefighters left, flames shot up ten feet from the shed, just a few steps away from Salit’s garage. Malone commented, “Jason saved our house, now we’re trying to save his.”
Malone’s wife and two neighbors joined in the two-hour bucket brigade to help Salit. As night fell, Malone and Salit patrolled every hour to detect any potential threats. By 3 a.m. on Thursday, Salit rushed across the street to extinguish a new brush fire.
“Are you okay?” a passing police officer shone a flashlight at Malone and inquired. “We’re safe, but not okay,” Malone replied, “we’re at a friend’s house across the street, where my daughter used to hunt for Easter eggs. There’s nothing left. That’s where our family history was.” He marveled at most of the spruce trees surviving while the houses did not.
Salit expressed, “The morning was brutal for me. Everything was uncertain. You look outside, and it’s like a horror show replaying.”
With no electricity or running water, they found comfort and humor in each other’s company. Jokingly, they discussed reusing the buckets to fill the toilet tank for flushing water. Salit even had grander plans for the plastic buckets.
“I love these buckets,” he said. “I want to cast them into bronze statues.”