Firefighter's stand saves homes of former neighbors in Sylmar's Oakridge Mobile Home Park

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Firefighters put water on a fully engulfed home at the Oakridge Mobile Home Park near Glenoaks and Foothill boulevards in Sylmar. (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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Residents were alerted to the fast-moving fire just after 10:30 p.m. Friday. (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

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A firefighter battles flames engulfing a home at Oakridge Mobile Home Park in Sylmar. (Jay Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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The fast-moving Sayre fire erupted late Friday above Veterans Memorial Park in Sylmar. By 5 a.m. Saturday, more than 2,500 acres had burned and 10,000 residents were under mandatory evacuation. (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

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A firefighter is surrounded by embers at the Oakridge Mobile Home Park in Sylmar. (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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Within an hour after it was reported at 10:29 p.m. Friday, the fire in Sylmar had consumed at least 100 acres. The total grew past 2,500 by early Saturday morning. (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

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Residents of the Rancho Carlisle neighborhood of Sylmar work to keep their homes from catching fire amid the threat of heavy winds carrying burning embers. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

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Residents are directed away from Glenoaks Boulevard in Sylmar as fire burns nearby. (Jay Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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Marcos Herrera fights the effects of smoky air and high winds as he helps evacuate horses from a Sylmar ranch. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

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Wind gusts of 70 mph were driving the fire, and embers ignited spot fires across a broad swath of the Sylmar area. (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

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Officials estimated that 1,000 homes were threatened by the blaze. (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

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The fire is ripping and tearing through everything, one Los Angeles Fire Department official said. (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

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The fire devastated the Oakridge Mobile Home Park on Glenoaks Boulevard near the 210 Freeway in Sylmar. (Jay Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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Residents along Glenoaks Boulevard near Roxford Street cope with smoke filling the air from the Sylmar blaze. (Jay Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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The Oakridge Mobile Home Park in Sylmar is left devastated by the firestorm. (Jay Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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The charred remains of a vehicle at the Oakridge Mobile Home Park. (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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Jesus Rios, 15, watches smoke billowing from the Oakridge Mobile Home Park. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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A lone car travels south on the I-5 after the interstate was shut down because of the fire that has ravaged Sylmar overnight and into the day. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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Traffic officer Ben Morales advises Carl Smith on avoiding freeway closures on his trip north to Sacramento. The Sylmar fire closed the 5 and 210 freeways as well as the northbound 405 north of the 118. (Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times)

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The greatest damage in the Valley was reported in the Oakridge Mobile Home Park near Sylmar, where more than 500 homes were destroyed in the so-called Sayre blaze that started late Friday. Police sealed off the community and declared it a potential crime scene. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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Marion Thornton is overcome with emotion as she revisits the family’s home. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

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Marion and Austin Thornton embrace as they look at their home. The fire stopped next door and their home only suffered smoke damage. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

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Sylmar‘s Oakridge mobile homes were devastated by fire. A coroner’s official said at a press conference Sunday morning that a search for bodies would continue but it is precautionary. He noted that no victims were found Saturday. (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

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Residents sift through rubble. The 11,213-acre Sayre fire was 70% contained. In all, 842 homes have been destroyed in multiple fires throughout Southern California in the last several days, and more than 100 more damaged. (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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Burned record albums lie amid the fire debris. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

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Willy Veili, 87, laughs as Paul Kukteja hands him papers that Veili thought had burned inside his home at the Oakridge Mobile Home Park in Sylmar. (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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Los Angeles County Fire and coroner’s office workers search the Oakridge Mobile Home Park in Sylmar for possible victims of the wildfire. (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

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Adries Rios, left, comforts his mother, Mary Rios, who lost her home in the fire at Sylmar’s Oakridge Mobile Home Park. At right is her grandaughter Jacqueline Rios, 9. It is the third time that Mary Rios and her husband have lost their home. They also were displaced in the 1971 Sylmar earthquake and the 1994 Northridge earthquake. (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

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Roland Conder, foreground, who lives at Sylmar’s Oakridge Mobile Home Park, is among the residents waiting outside the park entrance to hear about the fate of their homes. Conder says he learned that his home was spared and hoped to get into it to retrieve some keys he needed. (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

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A distraught Joan Kezios, 78, waits to hear about the fate of her home at Sylmar’s Oakridge Mobile Home Park. (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

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A search dog named Kazaam takes a break while going through the rubble at Sylmar’s Oakridge Mobile Home Park, where authorities are looking for possible victims of the wildfire that destroyed more than 500 homes there. (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

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Search and rescue teams from the Los Angeles Fire Department, county Sheriff’s Department and coroner’s office sift through rubble at Oakridge Mobile Home Park in Sylmar. Police shuttled residents into the community to retrieve belongings and view the devastation. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

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Faith Schwartz, left, weeps at the loss of her home. She plans to move to Burbank. (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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325 evacuees registered at the Red Cross Shelter by 9 a.m. in Sylmar High School. (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

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Residents, accompanied by police, were allowed into the Oakridge park to retrieve belongings from homes that escaped devastation. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

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Sherry Baker searches for salvageable items from her grandparents’ home at Oakridge Mobile Home Park on Tuesday. (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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Carl Cortez of Lake Arrowhead looks over the wall enclosing Oakridge Mobile Home Park on Monday morning. His mother’s and his sister’s mobile homes were destroyed when fire swept through the Sylmar mobile home park. Cortez said, “The fire must have been unbelievably hot to melt steel like it did.” (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

By Alexandra Zavis

Nov. 19, 2008 9:39 PM PT

Some of Los Angeles County Fire Capt. David Yonan’s happiest memories are of the two years he spent living with his then-wife at the Oakridge Mobile Home Park.

So when he received a tearful call from one of his former neighbors, desperate to know if his home was still standing Saturday morning, it didn’t matter that Yonan’s team had already been out all night putting out fires in Sylmar. He told his driver to head over there.

What they saw when they reached the park about 5:30 a.m. shocked even Yonan, a 30-year veteran from Fire Station 12 in Altadena.

With most of the park consumed by flames, city fire and police officers had made the difficult decision to pull out after completing a dramatic rescue of its residents a few hours earlier. Officials feared crews would be overwhelmed by the fast-moving fire. All that appeared to be left of the park’s 608 homes was a nightmarish vista of burning rubble and twisted metal.

“It was just horrendous,” Yonan said. But as the smoke cleared slightly, he and his driver realized some homes had survived.

“Even though the fire was ferociously burning on all four flanks, I thought if we could get the resources in, we could make a stand,” Yonan said.

The airwaves were jammed with radio talk, and Yonan had been unable to reach his supervisor earlier. This time, however, he managed to get through.

Yonan, 49, was expecting a reprimand for taking off on his own. Instead, the supervisor immediately dispatched two strike teams from the county and city fire departments, each made up of about 15 to 20 firefighters in four or five engines. At least one other strike team later joined the fight.

There was virtually no water pressure left in the park’s fire hydrants, so for the next four hours, tankers ferried water into the park to replenish the engines.

“We would be trying to make a stand as the fire was pushing us from house to house,” Yonan said. “Thank God, one of these water [trucks] would turn up with just enough water to keep us going.”

Wind gusts of up to 70 mph nearly knocked them off their feet.

“You’d be standing there with a hose, and it was like a big football player had just knocked into you,” he said.

Yonan ran from one group of firefighters to the next, urging them on like a cheerleader.

“These guys would not give up,” Yonan said. “It was amazing.”

When the firefighters finally gained the upper hand about 9:30 a.m. and stopped to look around them, they realized they had saved 131 homes.

As the trucks rolled away, Yonan called his ex-wife, Heidi Baynandor Yonan, to say that her home was among them. She broke down in tears, he said.

She was not the only grateful resident. Jody Miller’s entire street was spared.

“You tell him God bless him and thank you very much,” said Miller, 57, when she heard the account. “We don’t know how they kept it from burning, but they did.”

Yonan says he is proud of his team and relieved that they could help.

“We always put the fires out at the homes of people we don’t know. This time, I knew the people,” Yonan said. “The park is like one big family there, and it was so beautiful.”

Zavis is a Times staff writer.

alexandra.zavis@latimes.com

Firefighter’s stand saves homes of former neighbors in Sylmar’s Oakridge Mobile Home Park

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