By American standards for a western community Altadena is old. It was founded primarily by eastern families that made their fortunes in the 1800’s. My house was built by JW Clise. He made his fortune by arriving in Seattle soon after it suffered a great fire and established a real estate empire that still exists. He had 1255 built after his wife Anna became ill.
We had grown complacent about the fires in the hills. If you lived in Altadena for a while you got used to them. There had been other serious fires, the Station fire for one comes to mind, but they always stayed on the mountain. We would watch them burn with a sort of detachment, the fires never came off the hills as far as Altadena Dr. not even close.
That complacency created a sort of bravado. During the Station fire I posted up on the roof of 1255 with a garden hose and sprayed it with water. I was confident I could spot fight anything that hit the roof and caught fire, I was a regular junior fireman. On the night of the Eaton fire I made similar plans. I gathered up my hose from the front yard where I saw my neighbor packing his dogs for departure. He was new to the neighborhood moving in next door after a long time resident who built on what had been the vacant lot we played in as children next door. He asked me about my plans, and I told him the fires just burned on the mountain, then around the corner to Lake St., when they were really bad they might go to La Vina on the west side of town, but never would it come off the mountain to Altadena Dr. He kind of smiled at me said "no kidding?" then continued to put his stuff in his car. I shrugged and went back in the house.
When I got there Sweetie was in the midst of an operation to get our stuff out of the house. We had planned massive remodeling. We were prepared to put our belongings in plastic containers with handles on them to fight the dust and dreck of the impending work. She had gone into overtime placing shoes and clothes and a variety of things she had planned to take with us in them.
I, on the other hand, complained about it. I said "Sweetie we're just going to have to unpack all this stuff" I was thinking I was going to have to unpack all that stuff, but she paid me no mind, and strongly suggested I begin doing the same then she said something that I will always remember, she told me we were never coming back to this house.
Then the wind changed gears, from 2nd at 40 mph to 3rd hitting 60 and still pulling hard. Clise was a horticulturist, in Seattle his estate became a public garden. In Altadena our yard was full of majestic and interesting trees, and none of them enjoyed nearly hurricane force winds, 1255 didn’t either. It had sleeping porches with windows that would blow open and when a few did I began to batten down the house's hatches, and when I heard one go bang on the eastern side of the house I started there and looked out the window to see if I could see the fire. I could, it erupted over the hill behind 1255 with flames the size of a cruise ship. I called Sweetie over, she did note the progress, we took some pictures, and then
