Neighborhood Is Forced to Run for Its Life

Ilka Goldsmith looked out the window of her home in Baldwin Hills on Tuesday afternoon and saw her neighborhood burn down.

“The wind just kept blowing the fire toward us,” the 15-year-old student said. “The houses kept catching fire, one after another.

“The people were frantic, scared. Some were running away. Some were running back, trying to save things. But the heat was just too much. It drove them back. It was just too late.”

Dozens of homes would be destroyed or damaged--and at least two lives claimed--as the inferno shot up a hill and through the middle-class neighborhood with a ferocity that forced many residents to literally run for their lives.

In the chaotic aftermath, the residents of Baldwin Hills stood dazed in the streets, as the fire spent itself on houses and cars, gas jets from kitchens sending off still more flames.

On one street, near the heart of the blaze, the firescape included two bodies covered with sheets. They had been dragged into the middle of the street by a would-be rescuer.

The residents of Baldwin Hills took in all this and tried to calculate the fire’s toll. Many had lived in the neighborhood for a long time. Others had dreamed for just as long about living in the predominantly black, middle-class neighborhood and had finally made it. Either way, their homes and more were gone, and the loss transcended numbers.

“After a long, hard day at work,” said Howard Russell, 62, a 16-year resident of Don Carlos Drive, “I knew I always had a place to go--home.

“Now I don’t have a home anymore.”

Tremendous Heat

Tyrone Tyler, a 30-year-old auto plant worker, lost his home on Don Diego Drive, but that was not the story he chose to tell as he lingered in the late afternoon, his T-shirt and jeans smeared with grime, his face glistening with smoke-induced tears and sweat from the tremendous heat.

“I saw the fire starting to come down the street,” the tall angular man said. “It was bad. “We ran down as far as we could and started banging on doors, yelling, trying to warn everybody to get out. Some of the people got out, but we could hear someone--a woman hollering inside one of the houses. She was screaming.

“I tried to get to her. I really tried. But the heat was too bad.

“I couldn’t. I just had to get out of there.”

Later, fire officials said it was in that house where the fire’s two confirmed victims had perished.

Scant Opportunity

The speed with which the fire struck left many residents with scant opportunity to ponder the traditional fire victim’s dilemma of what to grab in the dash out the door. For those who got it worst, there was only time to run.

Burinda Van Dyke, for example, was relaxing in her jacuzzi when the fire roared up over her house on Don Carlos. She bolted, leaving everything behind to be devoured by flames--and everything was.

“My house is gone,” said Van Dyke, an elementary school teacher.

But at that moment, less than two hours after the fire rushed through her block on its way to further destruction, her concern was not for her house or other material objects.

“My dog,” the tiny woman said. “I couldn’t find him. My dog Charlie. The gate was locked. I don’t know whether he got out.”

Black Plumes

As she spoke, Caeser Epherson came sprinting toward his Don Carlos home. He is 69 years old, a retired mailman and his slacks and sports shirt were soaked with sweat. He had gone on a 30-minute errand and was on his way home when he saw the ominous black plumes.

Blocked by police lines, Epherson abandoned his car and ran for 15 blocks, most of it uphill.

He figured his home was gone, although the smoke was so thick that he could not tell for sure. But at that moment, he was looking for his wife.

“My wife,” he said. “I don’t know where she is. . . . She was home when I left.” He hoped that she had fled to her niece’s house. “But I called. She wasn’t there.”

Jack Furumura, 67, had wanted to stay and attempt to save his home on Don Jose Drive, but the roof was afire and his wife insisted that it was time to go. He gathered their two grandchildren, and they fled down the hill in his car.

Hopped Aboard

There, Furumura spotted a fire truck heading uphill. He hopped aboard, still eager to fight for his house. He had lived there 23 years. When the truck reached the top, the structure was engulfed.

“I just threw up my hands and said there’s no hope,” Furumura recalled. He stayed and watched it to the end.

Others had more time to make a stand against the roaring flames. Common garden hoses were their only weapon.

Norma Talley, a 68-year-old retired schoolteacher, described her skirmish.

“I was on the couch,” she said, “watching ‘General Hospital,’ when a neighbor phoned and said the fire was coming up the hill.”

She squirted water on her roof and walls and hoped the 20-foot swath of ice plant behind her house might act as a firebreak to hold back the flames. Still, dabs of fire from neighbors’ burning homes dropped onto her roof, and Talley and her 35-year-old son, Stanley, climbed on top of the house and extinguished them with water from the hose.

At 5 p.m., three hours into the ordeal, Stanley Talley was still on the roof with the garden hose. Norma Talley, however, had come down. The worst was over.

“I always believed,” she said, “that the Lord was going to protect me.”