Westlake Fire Brings Tense Moments but Skirts Homes

At noon, the fire on the hillside looked innocent enough. It was just across the canyon from Tony Tesoro’s expansive Aztec-modern home atop a ridge a few miles south of Westlake Village.

Spots of flame waved lazily along a crescent of blackened earth about half a mile away. They were edging down a steep slope, nudged by puffs of wind that frequently changed direction.

Forty homes in Carlisle Canyon, next to the Ventura-Los Angeles County line, were in danger. But for the moment the Lake Sherwood fire was going nowhere.

Residents of some of the houses were piling clothes and belongings, pets and children into their cars and hurrying down a narrow, winding road crowded with police and fire vehicles.

Some Stayed

Others stayed in spite of warnings. Tesoro and Mark Johnson, a friend visiting him from Sausalito, sat waiting inside the house on the hill after their wives and children left.

At 1:40 p.m., wind gusted toward Tesoro’s house. Within seconds, the spots of flame tore into green brush and rose to a ball 50 feet high.

The white concrete of Tesoro’s driveway reflected orange. The heat grew palpable.

Tesoro turned on the sprinklers on the succulent plants growing down the slope from his house.

About five minutes later, Los Angeles County Fire Engine 68 pulled up the steep driveway. Firemen unfurled several hoses and laid them on the grass. They trained one hose at a trickle over Tesoro’s large propane tank to keep the pressure from building inside.

Then they waited.

Hurried Work

As they watched, the action shifted down the hill toward a group of four houses in a tiny canyon. There, dozens of firemen worked hurriedly to drag hoses through the white-fenced clearing.

A crew in bright orange coveralls lined up at ready.

Less organized were several young people who scurried nearby with buckets of water, dousing small fires ignited by embers. They were members of the McCahon family, who stayed to defend their two homes in the canyon.

Tom McCahon’s small farm-style house sits closest to the underbrush at the top of the canyon. His mother, Betty, lives in the house near the main road. His sister, Margo Montgomery, lives nearby in Westlake Village.

Homes Lost in Other Fire

The McCahons know fires. They lost two houses in the 1978 Malibu-Agoura fire. They came to fight this one.

Montgomery and her husband, Michael, drove to her mother’s house as soon as they saw the smoke. They helped rescue a neighbor’s horse that got stuck in a muddy lake while trying to flee the heat and flames.

Tom McCahon and his fiancee, Wendy Larsen, were on their way home from Big Bear when they saw smoke from the San Fernando Valley. They didn’t know it was coming from their neighborhood until they reached Westlake Village. They raced after that.

“I came up the canyon a little excessive,” he acknowledged. He said he was stopped by the Highway Patrol at a roadblock on Westlake Boulevard.

“I ran that,” he said. The police chased him. “I think I got a ticket for reckless driving and got my car impounded. But what can you do?”

Family’s Fears

He had a towel around his face and a bucket in his hand when the flames started down the hill toward his home. The others in his family withdrew. He stayed.

His sister and his fiancee hugged in fear as the flames approached.

“She said, ‘I don’t want to lose my brother,’ ” Wendy recounted later. “I said, ‘I don’t want to lose my fiancee.’ ”

Between McCahon’s house and the flame was a wide swath of tall, yellowed grass. McCahon had cleared it of the native underbrush.

At 2:10 p.m., two firemen lit hand flares and touched them to the grass. In seconds the little fires engulfed the grassy field. In a perfectly choreographed performance, the new fire, driven by its own heat wind, moved swiftly up the hill and met the advancing firestorm. The two fires were extinguished and McCahon’s house was saved.

Helicopters Drop Water

A flank of the fire moved away harmlessly along the crest of the canyon toward the east. Helicopters swooped in low to discharge their loads of water, keeping it away from another house whose owner had fled.

The camp crew marched with military esprit to the edge of the burn. They began to cut with shovels and chain saws at the unburned vegetation to make a clearing.

Betty McCahon thought about the day and decided it was all she could take.

“I’ve gone through this before and I don’t want to go through it anymore,” she said. “I think I’m going to move to the flatlands and rent a house that’s surrounded by water,” she said.

Back up the hill at the Tesoro house, the tension had waned.

Tesoro’s friend asked the fire captain if the danger was past.

The captain was reluctant to say that it was. “I don’t ever trust brush fires,” he said.

But by 2:45, he and his fire truck were gone.

The fire was flaring up somewhere else. By mid-evening, it had burned an estimated 1,500 acres and was being battled by 400 men. Other houses were in danger.

For the McCahons and the Tesoros, only their Sunday had been ruined.

Times staff writers Anne Valdespino and Marc Igler also contributed to this story.