Olinda Village puts up a fight for its homes

Helen MacDougal and her daughter started up the road on foot Sunday, as wisps of blue-gray smoke wandered the blackened landscape like errant ghosts.

The prospects for their house were dim.

The renovated double-wide in Hollydale Mobile Home Estates sat in a deep, narrow bend of Carbon Canyon, in the little Brea community of Olinda Village.

MacDougal had just bought it with all she had left from a divorce. She had no fire insurance and was making just enough on her schoolteacher’s salary to support her son and daughter.

She could barely stand to think what was up ahead. But she had to find out.

Sheriff’s deputies wouldn’t let her drive back in.

Olinda Village, like much of the Chino Hills in north Orange County, was under mandatory evacuation.

About 7:30 p.m. the night before, the fire crested the ridge above MacDougal’s home. Timber started popping and ash rained down. Firefighters ordered everyone out.

The 120 homes of Olinda Village are surrounded by the cinder-dry brush of Chino Hills State Park. Only the two-lane Carbon Canyon Road connects the village to the outside world.

MacDougal wasn’t going to leave, but her 11-year-old son was frantic. “Everybody else is leaving,” he said. “We have to leave.”

So they jumped into her Toyota minivan and raced down Carbon Canyon to her mother’s house in Fullerton. All night they watched the news, but Olinda seemed just an afterthought as the fire raced from Yorba Linda toward Chino and Diamond Bar, on opposite points in the hills.

MacDougal’s daughter, Megan, 16 -- who evacuated with her homework -- cried because she thought they were going to be homeless. On the news, they saw the little plastic owl that is tied to a fence on their street. Behind it was a glowing wall of flames.

Not everyone left Saturday night as ordered. Robert Wilkinson, 75, wasn’t about to. Since moving to the village 32 years ago, the retired firefighter had been through three other major fires.

He watched the blaze on the ridge in awe. The wind was blowing the smoke away, so he could see the flames in sharp relief against the dark sky. “That’s one of the pertiest things,” he said.

Wilkinson knew there was no second-guessing his decision.

“You’re pretty well committed when you say you’re going to stay,” he said.

His evacuating neighbors brought their horses to his yard so he could keep an eye on them. All night, he watched the fire circle the village -- coming around the east side, then along the northern ridge and back down into the canyon on the south. Fire engines moaned up and down the steep hills.

A few houses away, Jeff Randall, 50, stayed even after his sons “decided to bail.” At about 4 in the morning, the fire was catching trees on his street. He and a neighbor helped put it out with a garden hose -- aided by a booster pump in the swimming pool.

Helen MacDougal and her daughter had first tried to drive home Sunday, but they were stopped and referred to a community center. There they ran into neighbors.

One woman mentioned casually that the houses on MacDougal’s street -- against woodland at the bottom of the canyon -- would be the first to burn.

“I think the whole place is going to go!” someone else said. MacDougal wanted to kill him.

She and Megan left for the checkpoint on Carbon Canyon Road. When no one was looking, they started walking the two miles home through the smoke. The low hills gathered close on either side of them, incinerated, black and bare. Helicopters circled, dropping water.

Partway home, they caught a ride from someone who had never left. They raced from the spot where they were dropped off to their street.

MacDougal could barely contain herself. Then she saw the house, intact, a firefighter standing in her backyard.

She could only see his back. But she would never forget it. She wanted to hug him. But she knew she couldn’t. She felt like a scofflaw, sneaking back into the evacuation zone and, quietly, through a side door, into her house.

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joe.mozingo@latimes.com