Altadena Fire Can’t Extinguish Annual Holiday Tradition

Their most loyal volunteer is busy cleaning up charred landscaping and trees. Other helpers are still traumatized from last-minute escapes and nights of wondering whether their homes survived the flames.

But the hillside community of Altadena will not let the brush fire steal Christmas.

“In Altadena, we’re ready to pick up by the bootstraps and go on,” said Mike Manning, president of the Christmas Tree Lane Assn., as he surveyed the first day of work on the community’s annual Christmas lights project.

Two dozen volunteers scurried about near Santa Rosa Avenue and Altadena Drive, untangling long strings of colored lights and hoisting them up into the deodar cedar trees that line each side of Santa Rosa for a mile.

The Altadena tradition of lighting the magnificent cedars along “Christmas Tree Lane” each December dates to 1920. And the volunteers who decorate the trees each year are not about to let disaster spoil their tradition.

“There have been only two things that stopped it: World War II and the 1973 energy crisis,” Manning said, adding that cancellation this year because of the fire was not even considered.

“We have to do it, this year especially. The kids are relying on us.”

Each holiday season, about 200,000 people visit Christmas Tree Lane in their cars, turning off their headlights as they drive slowly down what looks like a fairyland of lights.

And each year, loyal volunteers come back to help create that fairyland. Christy Salinas, 11, has worked on the lane for two years with her Girl Scout troop. “It’s fun and it gives you something to do other than sitting around watching TV and playing with your Barbies,” she said.

Rosa Prima Johnson has been helping put together the light show for 40 years. “I’ve done every job from screwing in the light bulbs to running errands to fixing lunch for everybody,” she said. “It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it. It makes you feel like you’re doing something wonderful.”

The recent fire at one point came perilously close to Christmas Tree Lane, volunteers said, and they worried that flying embers might ignite some of the 110-year-old trees that tower 100 feet over the street. Homes were evacuated only one block above the northernmost end of Christmas Tree Lane.

Fortunately for the residents, the fire did not rage any further down the hill. “If it would have gotten down here, this would have been ‘Matchstick Lane,’ ” said Jan Jouanicot, a Christmas Tree Lane committee member and resident of Santa Rosa.

One of those who lives in the hills above Christmas Tree Lane is Altadena Town Council member Craig Hall, who helped weave strings of lights through the feathery branches.

Hall and his wife were evacuated on the worst night of the fires when flames began licking at the top of Lake Avenue, about 2 1/2 blocks from their home.

“The firefighters were afraid that the wind would shift,” Hall recalled as he hung onto one end of a string of lights and watched the other end disappear into the tree overhead.

The Halls went to stay at their daughter’s home in another part of Altadena, only to spend a sleepless night wondering if their house had been spared. It was not until the following morning that they were able to return and see that their house had survived.

Although Hall has not worked on Christmas Tree Lane before, he said he volunteered this year to help keep Altadena’s community spirit alive.