The handful of locals at Mt. Baldy Lodge eating lunch Tuesday afternoon were startled when someone screamed that the Bridge fire was barreling toward the village. But perhaps they shouldn’t have been.
A day before, emergency officials issued evacuation orders for Mount Baldy Village and closed off the highway. Residents who stayed behind thought they would have more time to act.
Instead, strong wind gusts had fanned the flames, pushing the fire rapidly across several miles of rural countryside and right to their community. The fire now crested on the ridge overlooking the village, sending those who hadn’t evacuated scrambling.
They raced to tap water from a nearby stream and a swimming pool. Residents ran a hose line through the lodge’s dining room. Others hosed down their homes, their neighbors’ homes and the trees surrounding the community of about 400 people.
Nobody slept on Tuesday night into early Wednesday morning as firefighters battled the flames and locals raced around the village trying to protect it.
Asst. Chief Shawn Cate, right, and his crew with Mount Baldy Fire Department, survey the damage to homes from the Bridge fire along Bear Canyon Road.
Residents estimate that despite their efforts, 20 homes were destroyed in one of the first major wildfires in recent memory to reach into Mount Baldy Village, which is nestled in the Angeles National Forest.
“I can picture what homes were there before and are now gone,” one lifetime resident said from inside the lodge on Thursday. Residents have been meeting there in recent days to support one another, grab a cup of coffee and vent.
From its start north of Glendora on Sunday afternoon, the Bridge fire moved across a series of rural communities known for scenic trails and winter resorts, drawing responses from multiple firefighting and law enforcement agencies. Although its advance slowed as the week went on, by Friday it had charred more than 52,000 acres across San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties, according to official estimates.
In Mount Baldy Village, the fire destroyed multiple cabins nestled along narrow Bear Canyon Road, some of which had been built more than 100 years ago.
The Mount Baldy ski lifts are shrouded in smoke from the Bridge fire.
“I really thought I had more time,” said Bruce Bye, 69. He’s lived in the community for nearly 30 years, and purchased his cabin after retiring seven years ago. He lived in the cabin with his two dogs, Woody and Ozzy.
On Tuesday, his neighbor David Mix, 50, shouted that the fire was approaching their homes. The two men suspect they were the last to leave the canyon.
Mix, whose cabin had been in the family since the 1970s, lived there with his wife and two children. They left when the evacuation orders were issued earlier in the week, but he decided to stay behind.
“My first memories are of me putting my foot into that cedar tree,” Mix said while visiting the site Thursday.
His voice caught in his throat when he spotted his son’s burned bicycle, then he started to scale the charred wooden steps around his property.
“I’m going to be filled with regret,” he said, unsure about his decision to leave as the fire approached.
Paul Faulstich walks among the ruins of his friend, David Mix’s, property that was destroyed in the Bridge fire in Mount Baldy.
His friend Paul Faulstich, who accompanied him, said, “Don’t beat yourself up, Dave. There was nothing you could have done here.”
Near a destroyed boat and melted furniture hung three heavy water hoses that could have been used by firefighters. Mix doesn’t understand why emergency crews were not able to save his home.
Just then, Mount Baldy Assistant Fire Chief Shawn Cate arrived to survey the canyon with a group of volunteer firefighters. Mix said he did not blame Cate for his home’s destruction, but asked who was in charge of coordinating the response to the fire.
Mix later clarified he did not mean to insult Cate or any firefighters who are battling fires across the region. He simply wanted to know if there was somebody who had answers about the official response.
Because Mt. Baldy sits on the border of Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties and receives wildfire resources from the U.S. Forest Service, it’s not yet clear what decisions were made by which firefighting agencies as they dealt with multiple wildfires in the region.
Cate says there were firefighters in the village on Tuesday when the fire swept in. His volunteer company had been monitoring the fire along the ridge outside the village, and by the time the firefighters got back to town, they were barely ahead of the flames.
Mix and Cate exchanged a hug.
A fire ravaged car rests along Bear Canyon Road destroyed in the Bridge fire in Mount Baldy.
Later, Cate — himself a longtime resident — said that fighting a fire in the narrow canyon where the cabins burned would have been difficult. He did not elaborate.
But he added that firefighters generally discourage residents from trying to battle wildfires without the proper equipment.
Locals worry that modern building standards will not allow for the community to rebuild those homes.
“This fire really will change the makeup of Mount Baldy Village,” said longtime resident Tim Dole, 71, who also stayed behind after evacuation orders were issued. “You have generations here who have made this their home. People wanted to stay and pool whatever resources they could to save that.”
While there’s no telling how many structures the residents had saved, the general sentiment was that they couldn’t have sat on their hands. A resident who identified herself only as Hailey, 34, said that her neighbors had soaked her home in water.
“It means the world to me, and I think they saved our community,” she said.
Mt. Baldy Homeowners Assn. President Richard Wismer, 70, had remained behind to make sure that the water lines stayed open for firefighters.
“When people lose their home, they lose everything up here,” Wismer said.
The canyon walls continued to smolder on Thursday morning, and power remained off in the village. A steady hum of generators resounded through the area, accompanied by the chirping of birds and the bustle of locals driving around in golf carts with water, pet food and other supplies.
Mt. Baldy Lodge owner Ron Ellingson, 71, and his family have provided a hub for the village in good times and bad.
“We used pool water to soak down the front of the lodge,” Ellingson said. “It’s just a terrible thing what happened. But we’re still here.”
Their eyes bleary from a lack of sleep and reddened by the smoke hanging over the village, locals said they were trying their best to support one another.
Days after the fire, Mix and Bye met at the lodge for the first time since they‘d left their homes. Bye’s dogs, Woody and Ozzy, looked in from outside as the two men hugged each other.
Mount Baldy Fire Department firefighters look over a home that was completely destroyed in the Bridge fire in Mount Baldy.
Bye told Mix, “Thank you for the warning that day.”
The men said something else to each other under their breath, but couldn’t manage to say much else.
Friends have since started GoFundMe campaigns for the Mix family and for Bye and his dogs.